
PRESENTED BY 



THE SABBATH QUESTION. 



SERMON'S 



PREACHED TO THE 



Ifalkj Cjjtittjj, ©range, % $. 



B Vs 

GEORGE B. BACON, 

I" 

PASTOR. 



NEW YORK: 

CHARLES SCRIBKER & CO., 654 BROADWAY. 

1868. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, 

By JOHN F. TROW, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the 

Southern District of New York. 






THE TROW & SMITH 

BOOK MANUFACTURING COMPANY, 

46, 48, 50 GREENE ST., N. Y. 



PREFACE. 

This book is simply what it pretends to be, a 
series of sermons preached to the author's own 
congregation. He has preferred to print them 
unaltered ; adding, however, occasional references 
in the form of foot-notes. And if the book shall 
seem to be needlessly diffuse or unduly rhetorical, 
in its style, it is only just to remember that it was 
designed to be spoken, not to be read. 

It is not probable that there is anything new 
in the argument herein presented. Indeed, it is 
scarcely possible to say anything new on a subject 
which has been so long and so thoroughly dis- 
cussed. But the argument for the observance of 
the Lord's day, as these sermons present it, is not 
the one to which the American churches are in 
the habit of listening ; and it therefore had the 
merit of freshness to most of those who heard it. 
Moreover, the discussion seemed to be timely, in 
view of recent agitations of " the Sunday ques- 
tion " in New York and New Jersey : and some 
persons found it useful in the relief of perplexities 



IV PREFACE. 

by which their minds had been troubled. Others, 
hesitating fully to accept the argument, desired 
the opportunity to examine it more carefully. 
The volume is, therefore, printed especially for the 
use of those to whom the sermons were first 
preached. 

But it is believed that the wider publication of 
it may be useful. For there are many Christian 
people who, while greatly approving and even 
adopting what has been called the " Anglo-Amer- 
ican " practice with regard to the Lord's day, 
have never been satisfied with the theory which 
influential writers in England and America have 
supposed to be essential to that practice. And it 
is not pleasant for those who are thus honestly 
obliged to differ from their brethren, to find them- 
selves put, even by implication, outside of the 
number of u evangelical Christians; 5 ' and to be 
told that the opinions which they hold are " de- 
fective, erroneous and worthless," or "productive 
of extreme mischief," * or the like. Against such 
"judgment of the brethren," to which there seems 
to be a constant tendency, not only on the part of 
individuals, but even on the part of corporations, 

* See Gilfillan's " The Sabbath." American Tract So- 
ciety's Edition, pp. 576-7. 



PREFACE. V 

this volume may serve as a timely protest. For 
though that protest has been often made, and with 
the sanction of most venerable and authoritative 
names, it needs to be repeated constantly. And 
just now it will be a useful encouragement to 
some perplexed consciences to be reminded that 
if they must hold such views as those herein set 
forth, they can hold them without sin. 

For this reason, among others ; and because it 
is believed that these views are really, as they 
were honestly designed to be, in the interest of 
the better observance of the Lord's day, they re- 
ceive a publication which was not at first intend- 
ed for them. 



CONTENTS. 



Sermon I. — The Sabbath of God 9 

Preached February 23d, 1868. 
Sermon II. — The Pttepose of the Jewish Sabbath. . 31 

Preached March 1st, 1868. 
Sermon III. — The Use and Abuse of the Jewish 

Sabbath 59 

Preached March 8th, 1868. 
.Sermon IV. — The Loed's Day a Peivtlege 89 

Preached March 22d, 1868. 
Sermon V.— The Loed's Day Honoeable 125 

Preached March 29th, 1868. 
Sermon YI. — The Eight Obseeyance of the Loed's 

Day 157 

Preached April 5th, 1868. 



I. 
THE SABBATH OF GOD. 



1* 



THE SABBATH OF GOD. 



Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the 
host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work 
which he had made ; and he rested on the seventh day from 
all his work which he had made. And God blessed the 
seventh day and sanctified it : because that in it he had rested 
from all his work which God created and made. 

Genesis, ii. 1, 2, 3. 

It is impossible to turn these earliest pages 
of the Hebrew Scriptures without peculiar in- 
terest, in which there is mingled something of 
irrepressible reverence. If for no other reason 
than their extreme antiquity, then for that, they 
are sufficiently venerable. But they challenge 
our reverence not for that only ; the themes 
with which they are occupied are of such sub- 
lime importance, and the statements which they 
make are uttered with such simplicity, such dig- 
nity, such poetic beauty, such philosophic wis- 
dom, that we cannot read them without increas- 
ing wonder and deepening veneration. Puzzled 



12 THE SABBATH OF GOD. 

we may often be, in our endeavors to interpret 
them ; perplexed by the apparent contradictions 
which we find in them, when we compare 
them with the records discovered by the re- 
searches of science ; forced to reject old ex- 
planations and to take up with new hypotheses 
concerning them; but we cannot treat them 
with contempt or with indifference. We may 
discover that they are not what we at first 
thought they were, — that they are not, in all 
cases, to be taken literally, — that in matters 
strictly scientific they are probably not authorita- 
tive ; but if we should, therefore, infer that the 
world has outgrown these first chapters of the 
book of Genesis and can afford to disregard 
them, we should make a very serious mistake 
indeed. 

Tor if these pages do not teach us geology, 
as we used to think they did, they teach us 
something better and more valuable than geol- 
ogy. If they do not teach us chronology, they 
teach us truth of more eternal interest than chro- 
nology. They assert some things concerning 



THE SABBATH OF GOD. 13 

God, and some things concerning man, which it 
is of the profoundest importance that we should 
know and ponder; things which are fundamen- 
tal to all true religious thought, and to all high 
religious activity. The revelation of a personal 
God, and of man as made in the image of God, — 
if these first pages of Genesis declared no other 
truths than these, still they would be of most 
incalculable value. One God, from whom are 
all things — one man, made in the image of God, 
— these are the two prime facts which lie at the 
foundation of the world's history. God and 
man, — these are the two great actors in that 
history. The relation of- God to man, the re- 
lation of likeness, — though at an infinite dis- 
tance, yet real likeness notwithstanding, — this 
is what makes possible a science of theology. 
The relation of man to God, a relation which 
makes possible some reciprocity of affection, this, 
I might almost say, is the very definition of re- 
ligion. Such considerations as these will show us 
why it is that these first pages of the Bible are 
not to be discarded as if obsolete and worthless. 



14 THE SABBATH OF GOD. 

There seems to be another truth, of pro- 
found interest and value,— a truth somehow 
grounded upon this relation between God and 
man, — hinted at in the verses which I have 
chosen for our text. It will not be easy, 
perhaps, to draw it forth and state it in such 
a way as shall convey no false impression. 
The work of explaining these first chapters 
of Genesis is not at all easy. We read of God 
as working six days, to create the heavens 
and the earth, and resting on the seventh. 
And we find some parallel drawn between 
God and man, as working and as resting. 
And all sorts of questions occur to us, — ques- 
tions which it is much easier to ask than to 
answer. What are these six days in which God 
wrought these works ? What is this seventh 
day in which he rested from them ? What is 
his work ? What is his rest ? Is he, then, ever 
tired ? Or is he ever idle ? And what analogy 
can there be between such words as " work " 
and " rest " applied to God, and the same 
words applied to man ? 



THE SABBATH OF GOD. 15 

And yet analogy of some sort seems to be 
hinted. Here is this mysterious assertion that 
our human nature is somehow in the image of 
God ; and here is the observance of rest, on our 
part, grounded on the fact that God himself 
rested, and sanctified and blessed the day on 
which he rested. Surely there is something to 
be learned concerning our own duty, concerning 
our own privilege, concerning that "rest" 
spoken of in the Epistle to the Hebrews,* (or, 
as it stands in the original,! that " keeping of 
Sabbath/') winch "remaineth for the people of 
God," if we can learn what God's own Sabbath, 
of which this text speaks, signified and wherein 
it consisted. 

Let us rather say " consists " and " signifies" 
— using the present tense, and not the past. 
For I believe, and I shall try to show, that 
God's Sabbath still continues. Need we insist, 
■ — nay even can we suppose that the seventh 
day, which God blessed and sanctified, was really 
a day of twenty-four hours' duration, according 

* Chap. ii. and iv. t Chap. iv. 17. 



16 THE SABBATH OF GOD. 

to the measure of a man's comprehension ? If 
the six days which preceded it were, as used 
to be supposed, six literal days of twenty-four 
hours each, then this also should be such. But 
if, as science tells us, and as Christian scholars 
all agree, it was not through six brief days, 
but through six mighty epochs of innumerable 
years, that this work of creation was perfected ; 
if, through ages upon ages, and with catastrophe 
after catastrophe, and by mighty agencies of 
fire and frost and flood, God wrought the finished 
order of his perfect universe, until at last it 
was made ready for the man created in his 
image, — if this is true, then we should fitly and 
naturally expect the seventh day to be a long, 
vast epoch like the others. 

Concerning the six ages of creation there is 
not any longer room for doubt. There was a 
time — not so very long ago — when good men 
imagined that unless they contended for the 
literal exactness of this narrative in Genesis, they 
were surrendering the very fortress of revealed 
religion, and undermining the very foundation 



THE SABBATH OF GOD. 17 

of the truth. And so they did contend for lite- 
ral days, and literal mornings and literal even- 
ings to each one, and each one twenty-four 
literal hours in length, no more,, no less ; con- 
tended vehemently as for essential truth ; con- 
tended in the face of science ; contended in con- 
tempt of all the testimony which God had 
written in the book of nature ; contended even 
in conflict with the coherent story of the book 
of Genesis itself. But this is no longer thought 
necessary ; nor is it any longer deemed heresy, 
if we interpret the Scriptural record by the com- 
mentary of the records in the rocks. And the 
result of this interpretation is that distinct and 
successive periods in the process of creation, oc- 
curring in the general order indicated in Scrip- 
ture, are indeed discovered in geological history ; 
but instead of being periods of twenty -four hours, 
they must have been periods of prolonged and 
almost incalculable duration. Each one was 
preceded by a night of darkness, convulsion, 
catastrophe;* and when one night ended a 

* The most recent statement of scholarly interpretation 



18 THE SABBATH OF GOD. 

new order of creation was produced, — and then 
another night of fire or cataclysm came, and 
then another day ; and so on from stage to stage, 
until at last into the world which had been fit- 
ted up, by these successive acts, for human habi- 
tation and discipline, the man, made in the 
image of God, was introduced. And the even- 
ing of convulsion and darkness, and the morn- 
ing of new creative forms and phases, made up 
each one of these immense primeval days. 

on this point may be found in Lange's Commentary on Gen- 
esis, issued in the American edition since this sermon was 
preached. It is quoted because it is the most recent, and 
because it gives with sufficient completeness the theory of 
the creative " evenings." 

" We are not to conceive of the evening and morning of 
the single creative days as merely symbolic intervals of the 
day of God. According to the analogy of the first day, the 
evening is the time of a peculiar chaotic fermentation of 
things, while the morning is the time of that new, fair, solemn 
world-building that corresponds to it. "With each evening 
there is also indicated a new birth-travail of things, anew 
earth revolution, which elevates the old formation that went 
before it, — a seeming darkening, a seeming sunset, or going 
down of the world. * * * With each morning, on the contrary, 
there is a new, a higher, a fairer, and a richer state of the 
world. In this way do the evening and morning in the 
creative periods have the highest significance for an agree- 
ment of the sacred geology with the results of the scientific 
geology." — Lange, " Genesis" Am. Edition, p. 167. 



THE SABBATH OF GOD. 19 

Only, whereas of the first and second, and of 
all the six, there is recorded a beginning and an 
end, there is no end recorded of the seventh. 
What if it be not ended yet? What if the 
Sabbath which be°;an when the creative work 
was finished, has continued and is still continu- 
ing, and shall still continue while the created 
universe endures! Each one of those creation 
days was ages long ; is the Sabbath-day any 
shorter? Has it ever been broken in upon 
by any new creative act ? Is not this age of 
human history, of human discipline, of human 
sanctification, God's Sabbath age. Is it not this 
which he has blessed and sanctified ? 

I know that it is not wise nor safe to specu- 
late concerning questions about which we know 
so little, — but this inquiry is not one of simply 
speculative interest. There is a parallel drawn 
in Scripture between God's Sabbath and man's 
Sabbath, between God's rest and man's rest. 
Indeed the one is made the ground of the other. 
And thev are the same in kind. Sabbath is 
rest. When we know wherein the rest of God 



20 THE SABBATH OF GOD. 

consists we may know wherein our rest is to 
consist. When we discover what God's Sab- 
bath is, we may discover what our own Sab- 
bath is, or what it ought to be. And I insist, 
therefore, that the study which w r e are pursu- 
ing this morning is not fanciful or unreasonable. 

Assuming, then, for the sake of argument, 
what it is the duty of those who doubt it to dis- 
prove, that the seventh day which God has 
blessed and sanctified is even now continuing, 
let us reverently ask how he is spending it. I 
speak as if it were a mere assumption for the 
sake of argument, although, if so, it is an assump- 
tion which the writer of the Epistle to the He- 
brews also makes, when he speaks of the rest into 
which God has entered as if still continuing, and 
as being the very same into which a promise is 
left us of entering also. So that the case stands 
thus ; God began to rest : God never has ceas- 
ed to rest : God even speaks of his own rest as 
a continuous and permanent state, in which men 
may share. " My rest ; my rest ! " The words 
are solemnly quoted over and over again by the 



THE SABBATH OF GOD. 21 

writer of that Epistle, as full of most profound 
and awful meaning. The rest of God ; the Sab- 
bath of God ; not many rests, but one rest ; 
not many Sabbaths, but one Sabbath • not a rest 
which comes and goes, but a rest which remains 
— perpetual, eternal, — this is the true Sabbath. 
It is God's Sabbath, and it is our Sabbath also, 
if we do not refuse it. What is it, then ? How 
does God spend it ? Wherein does it consist ? 
Not, at any rate, in idleness or inactivity. We 
have Christ's own word for that. There has 
been such a conception of God as that, having 
made the world and started it in motion, he 
lets it spin forever, unheeded and unsustained 
except by some inherent energy of its own • but 
this is not the Christian conception of God. To 
loll upon Olympus, to look down in idle uncon- 
cern upon the changing scenes of earth, to exist 
in selfish sloth from age to age — this was a 
heathen view of God, and a most gross and 
false conception of divine blessedness. The God 
and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the one 
God, the true God, the living God, is no such 



22 THE SABBATH OF GOD. 

being as that. " My Father worketh, hitherto, 
and I work/' said our Lord in that sublime 
discourse of his concerning the Sabbath.* " You 
accuse me," says he to the Jews, " you accuse 
me of working on the Sabbath-day ; so I do ; 
so does my Father ; work is not a violation of 
the Sabbath ; idleness is not an observance of 
it ; my Father is at rest, but he is not idle. My 
Father worketh, hitherto, and I work." 

These are divine words. They are too won- 
derful for human philosophies ; they are high, 
we could not attain unto them with our unaided 
imaginations. Perfectly to grasp the paradox 
of a God forever busy, yet at rest forever, — of 
a God in infinite repose, and yet in infinite ac- 
tivity, only he who spake as never man spake 
was able. And yet the paradox is true ; we 
feel the truth of it and do homage to it, even 
if we cannot explain it. For if God were in- 
deed idle (as a German writer has beautifully 
said), no sun would shine, no flowers would 
bloom, all creation would languish, all the uni- 

* John v. 17. 



THE SABBATH OF GOD. 23 

verse would dissolve. He is at rest, and yet he 
makes the outgoing of every morning and 
every evening to rejoice; every singing-bird 
pipes because He gladdens it ; every sparrow 
flies because he bears it up ; every lily grows 
because he nurtures it ; every hair of every 
humblest head is numbered by his knowledge. 
He is at rest, and yet the work of his preserv- 
ing care continues. He creates no longer ; but 
he sustains, preserves, perpetuates his work. 

But much more than this. God enters now 
upon a higher work ; not a work of force but a 
work of love. He has to save the man whom 
he has made. He has to save and sanctify 
him; and through the long ages of his Sab- 
bath he has patiently been working out, and 
still is patiently working out the spiritual per- 
fectness of man. Herein, indeed, we find his 
Sabbath work. In six days he made the heavens 
and the earth, and all the host of them, and fit- 
ted up man's dwelling-place and put man in it. 
On the seventh he is making all things over, 
making all things new. On the sixth day he 



24 THE SABBATH OF GOD. 

made man : on the seventh he is making him 
a new creature ; on the sixth day he made man 
good ; on the seventh he is making him holy ; 
on the sixth day that which is natural ; on the 
seventh day that which is spiritual. 

And so the rest of God is seen to be the ris- 
ing from a lower to a higher work ; a ceasing 
from the work of making to the nobler employ- 
ment of saving ; a passing from his miracles of 
power to his sublimer miracles of grace ! God 
made the seventh day holy, — blessed it and 
sanctified it* When the Scripture says he sanc- 
tified it, it does not merely mean that he called 
it holy, but that he made it holy. Hitherto in 
God's creation there had been no chance for 
holiness. Matter cannot be holy; God could 
see the material world, that it was good, but he 
could not see that it was holy ; there is no moral 
quality at all in it. He saw the light, that it was 
good,— but not that it was holy ; so the firma- 
ment was good, and the earth, and the waters, 
and the vegetable world, and the changeful orbs 
of heaven, and the creeping things of water, 



THE SABBATH OF GOD. 25 

and flying fowls of air, and mighty beasts of 
earth, all these were good; and man himself, 
as first of all the animal world, as sum and chief 
of these created things, was good, but even he, 
as yet, not holy. The innocence in which man 
was made was a different thing from holiness. 
Holiness cannot be created. It is not the re- 
sult of force. It is the work of liberty. Power 
can create. But only love can sanctify. The 
earth and the heavens and all the host of them 
could be spoken into being by the sovereign 
will of God, and fashioned through the silent 
ages by his hands. And man, the summit of 
creation, could be formed, a living soul, with 
powers like God's ow r n powers, with liberty like 
God's. But now, if the problem is to make the 
man employ his liberty for good and not for evil, 
use his powers for right and not for wrong, if, 
in a word, the work is to make this free man a 
a holy man, — this is a work, not for creative 
force, but for renewing love ; not for might like 
that which heaved the heavens above the spa- 
cious earth; not for power like that which fixed 



26 THE SABBATH OF GOD. 

the bounds of earth and seas, but for the still, 
strong Spirit of the living, loving God. 

Through six mighty ages, then, in slow suc- 
cession, was creation perfected, and it was very 
good. At the head of it, made lord over it, 
with dominion over all the works of the Creator's 
hands, stood man, formed in God's image, — free 
with the dangerous liberty to choose right or to 
choose wrong, — free in the balanced equipoise 
of His imperial will. What the Creator's hand 
can do for him is done. He is made free to 
act, able to act. If he is forced to act either in 
one way or in the other, compelled to choose 
either for right or for wrong, his freedom is de- 
stroyed, and his holiness is impossible. Holiness 
upon compulsion is not holiness. Virtue pro- 
duced by force is not virtue at all. Right 
action which is the result of power has not the 
blessedness which God designs for man. There 
is no longer room for the creative hand upon 
man. God has made him : but now himself 
must act. The six days' work in his behalf is 
finished. The seventh is bea;un. In the work 



THE SABBATH OF GOD. 27 

of creation God has nothing more to do ; Scrip- 
ture and science are at one on this point. This 
seventh age of human history is consecrated to 
a nobler work ; God lias blessed it and sanctified 
it. He has devoted it to making holy the man 
whom he made free. 

This is the way in which God spends his 
Sabbath. He creates no longer. But he sanc- 
tifies and saves. And so, it is not a mere fancy, 
if we discover how, as the six days that preced- 
ed it began, each one with evening, even with 
the darkness of convulsion and catastrophe and 
almost of chaos come again, — so this seventh 
day began with evening, even with the night of 
sin. The man made free to act, chose to act 
wrong. The image of his Maker was defaced 
and marred. The whole creation shared the 
shock and damage of that evil choice. Darkness 
came upon the earth — the darkness of a dread- 
ful ruin — and gross darkness on the people, even 
the moral darkness of a deadly sin. The whole 
creation groaned and travailed in the pain and 



28 THE SABBATH OF GOD. 

bondage which that bad choice wrought. The 
night of sin began this Sabbath-day. 

But presently the day-star rose, the day-star 
from on high that visited us — the bright and 
morning star, the Sun of Righteousness. The 
dawn began in Eden with the promise to the 
man who sinned. It brightened till the Sun 
arose at Bethlehem. It shineth more and more 
unto the perfect clay. It is the light of the 
glory of God shining in Jesus Christ, our Lord. 
The work of this, the last, the Sabbath-day, is 
to bless and make holy what the six days had 
created. And the evening, and the morning 
are the seventh day. 

But no night shall follow this. This 
sun which has arisen never shall go down. 
The gates of this eternal Sabbath shall not 
be shut at all, by day; for there shall be no 
night there. And the rest whereinto God has 
entered, and whence his influence of love goes 
forth to sanctify and save the world,— the rest 
whereinto Christ has entered and whence his 
loving presence issues with perpetual power to 



THE SABBATH OF GOD. 29 

comfort and to help,— the rest into which we are 
entering by his grace and through his Spirit, — 
this rest remaineth, though the earth and heaven 
should pass away. This is the Sabbath. And 
of this all other days are shadowy and imper- 
fect types. They vanish. This endures. 

So we find in the Apocalypse the supplement 
of Genesis. And if any man has ever won- 
dered why no more is said in the Scriptures 
concerning the seventh day, I tell him that 
the whole Bible is the history of the seventh 
day. To it the six days were preliminary. 
Beside the splendor of its saving grace, the 
skill and power of those creative eras dwindle. 
When God ceased from forming worlds, and 
fashioning their myriad inhabitants, it was to 
sanctify and bless. His highest rest is holiness ; 
and holiness with him is not an idle and inac- 
tive being good, but a perpetual, and busy, and 
self-sacrificing doing good as well. 

And if we are to enter into his rest, it must 
be by entering into his beneficence, and by 
abiding in his holiness. Does it seem to us, 



30 THE SABBATH OF GOD. 

as well it may, that of all words inhuman speech 
there is no sweeter word than this word, rest ? 
Well, there is left to us a promise of entering 
into rest. Does it seem to us that all our 
human rest is transient, — for a season only, — 
ends presently in new and harder labors," — in re- 
newed fatigue ? Well, then, there is left to us a 
promise of entering into God's rest. He is never 
weary. He is neVer idle. We, too, shall be 
never weary. We, too, shall be never idle. We 
shall rest from sin. We shall rest in holiness. 
We shall rest in God. There, and only there, 
the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary 
are at rest. 

Let us, therefore, fear, brethren, least, a promise 
being left us of entering into his rest, any of 
us should seem to come short of it. 



II. 

THE PUKPOSE 

OP 

THE JEWISH SABBATH. 



THE PURPOSE OF THE JEWISH 
SABBATH. 



Keep the Sabbath day to sanctify it, as the Lord thy God 
hath commanded thee. Six days shalt thou labor and do 
all thy work : But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the 
Lord thy God : in it thou shalt not do any work ; thou, nor 
thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy man-servant, nor thy 
maid-servant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy 
cattle, nor the stranger that is within thy gates : that thy 
man-servant and thy maid-servant may rest as well as thou. 
And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of 
Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence 
through a mighty hand and a stretched-out arm : therefore 
the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath-day. 
Deuteronomy, v : 12, 13, 14, 15. 

In the last sermon, we studied that sublime 
passage in the book of Genesis which records 
the completion of God's creative work and the 
beginning of his rest. I tried to show that 
the divine rest from creation has continued 
ever since, and still continues; that the Sab- 



34 THE PURPOSE OF 

bath of the Lord our God not only cometh, but 
now is. I tried to show also (so far as I might 
reverently touch upon such mysteries), wherein 
the rest of God consists, and how he is spend- 
ing this long Sabbath-day of his ; that rest, to 
him, is not idleness nor inactivity, but rather a 
rising from the exercise of might and power to 
the still, strong exercise of his loving and eter- 
nal Spirit ; and that he is spending his Sabbath 
in the sanctifying of the world which through 
six immemorial ages he had been creating. 
And I reminded you of the gracious promise 
which is left to us, of entering into God's own 
rest ; and tried to show how more than ever 
sweet and beautiful that promise sounds, when 
we discover that it is a rest of holiness, the rest 
of being good and doing good, the rest of tire- 
less love. 

This, then, the rest of God, is the true 
rest : this, the Sabbath of God, is the true Sab- 
bath. We use words sometimes in a lower, 
sometimes in a higher sense ; we are obliged to 
use them so, partly because of the poverty of 



THE JEWISH SABBATH. 35 

human speech which has not words enough for 
every thing, and so compels some to do double 
duty ; but more because of the relation of 
things seen to things unseen, and the corre- 
spondence between them. For example, we have 
only one word, "life," by which to designate 
the life of the body and the life of the soul : and 
we are obliged constantly to remind ourselves 
that when we use the word in its lower signifi- 
cation, we have not exhausted its meaning; 
that (as a favorite hymn-writer has expressed 
the thought), 

" 'Tis not the whole of life to live, 
~Nov all of death to die ; " 

that the limited, temporal meaning of the word 
is but a shadow of its spiritual meaning. I 
know that the lower meaning is constantly 
absorbing our attention as if it were all. But 
it is not all. The true life, the real death, are 
of the soul, unseen, eternal. 

So with this word " rest." We know what 
it means when we speak of bodily rest, of tak- 
ing rest in sleep, of days of temporal rest. We 



36 THE PURPOSE OF 

know that even in this usage of the word, its 
meaning is very sweet and beautiful; that 
when we are worn out with weary labor, with 
work of toiling hands, and busy feet and ach- 
ing head, the comfort of repose is very great, 
nay, very necessary ; that without it the unre- 
freshed body must become the victim of dis- 
ease, the prey of death. We know that even 
every toiling beast must rest or die. We know, 
by an experience which defines it better than 
all verbal definitions can, what rest is and how 
comforting, how much to be desired, how not to 
be dispensed with it is to every living creature. 
But there is a higher rest, a nobler rest, a 
truer rest, than what is physical ; just as there 
is a higher life, a nobler life, a truer life, than 
what is physical. As comforting and pleasant 
to the spirit as the repose of evening to the 
body ; as much more blessed and complete and 
enduring as eternity is more perfect than time, 
is this true rest. It is that whereof the Lord 
Jesus spoke in words of gracious promise when 
he said, " Come unto me all ye that labor and 



THE JEWISH SABBATH. 37 

are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." It 
is that into which God has entered, and in 
which he now abides, his works being finished 
from the foundation of the world. It is that 
into which a promise is left us of entering also. 
But of this rest it is not easy to conceive. 
Eye hath not seen it. We have seen the body 
locked in the embrace of sleep, and watched 
its peaceful breathing when the labors of the 
day are over. But this spiritual rest is some- 
thing which cannot be seen by mortal eyes. 
For the tired body, too, there are restful sounds 
that soothe the drowsy senses : there are refresh- 
ment and repose in pleasant music ; or when 
we lie where branches sway and rustle over us, 
and the birds sing in them, there is rest in the 
very sounds which our ears hear. But this 
spiritual rest of which I speak, makes no such 
appeal to sense. Ear hath not heard it ; neither 
has the imagination conceived it. It can only 
be known by being felt and enjoyed. Just as 
description of light is impossible to one born 
blind, so no definition, no description, no rep- 



38 THE PURPOSE OF 

reservation of this spiritual rest is adequate 
for an nnrestful soul. God must reveal it to 
us by his Spirit, if we are to know what it is. 
He must make us partakers of it. We must 
enter into it. 

And this is what God is all the while invit- 
ing us to do, attracting us, impelling us to do ; 
this is what he yearns to have us do ; it is for 
this that all his government is exercised, that 
all his providence is arranged, that all his Spirit 
strives. And the way in which he leads us to 
this spiritual rest, as to all spiritual things, is 
through our natural experiences. First, that 
which is natural ; then that which is spiritual. 
The lower first and afterward the higher. That 
is the law. Prom things that are seen to things 
that are unseen. That is the order. 

Remembering this, we begin to see the rea- 
son for the commandment which 'God gave the 
Hebrew people through his servant Moses, and 
which I have taken for a text. Here was a 
rude, self-willed, headstrong people, to be made 
quiet, religious, trustful, holy. This was the 



THE JEWISH SABBATH. 39 

problem : a people to be trained and educated 
to a religious exaltation which should make 
them fit to be the religious teachers of the 
world ; a race of more or less degraded slaves 
to be familiarized with spiritual truth, and pu- 
rified by it. And this was the way the problem 
was solved : by a system of types, and prophe- 
cies, and shadows. Earth was made to them 
the hint of heaven. Nature was to lead them 
to the God of nature. Events of time and place 
were to suggest to them realities beyond time 
and superior to place. Things of sense were to 
be the media of things of spirit. The Jewish 
law cannot be understood, nor the worth and 
significance of it measured, unless this is con- 
stantly borne in mind. 

Eor example, it was the design of the in- 
spired leader of the Hebrew people, the great 
lawgiver and soldier who was God's instrument 
in mating them a nation, — it was his design, 
or let us rather say, it w* as God's design through 
him, to teach this people the great truth on 
which we have been meditating. It was no 



40 THE PURPOSE OF 

easy task. To make things unseen real and 
vivid ; to lift their minds up to the truth of an 
immortal rest of peaceful holiness, when a host 
of busy cares, of snaring temptations, of hurtful 
passions, of degrading lusts, were dragging 
them downward,— this was a very difficult 
thing indeed. Persistent, patient, skilful school- 
ing was necessary, as it is with an ignorant and 
perverse child. To use words in a lower sense, 
at first, and gradually to lift them to their high- 
er sense ; to make use of the " illusiveness of 
life " (as Robertson beautifully calls it*), — and 
to show what infinite stretch there is to truth ; 
how it draws out like an endless telescope ; or 
how (to use another figure,) it is a clue which, if 
you hold one end of it, you may follow out 
eternally,— this was the way, the only way to 
do the work. 

So the law of association was called in to 
teach the people. And as when men build a 
monument to mark some famous spot, or to 

* Sermons by the late Rev. F. W. Robertson. Vol. III. 
Sermon VI. 



THE JEWISH SABBATH. 41 

commemorate some great achievement, or to 
perpetuate the memory of some illustrious life, 
that when the coming generations ask " What 
is this monument ? " the story of the place, or 
of the deed, or of the life, being associated with 
this material thing, this block of granite or of 
marble that can be touched and seen, may live 
and not die ; so Moses erected for this people a 
monumental day, that when, in the uniform 
succession of the davs, it came around, and men 
should ask "What is this day?" the higher 
truth attached to it should be permanent and 
powerful. 

What, then, was this day ? Moses called it 
Sabbath — which means rest. And so it was a 
Sabbath ; not the real Sabbath, but a Sabbath, 
in some inferior meaning of the word. Not the 
real Sabbath, I say, for that, as we have seen, 
is constant and above time; not the perfect 
rest, — for that is uniform, perpetual, spiritual, 
— but in some limited and lower meaning of the 
word a rest ; a Sabbath shadowy, imperfect, 
transient, that should yet, by its very imperfect- 



42 THE PURPOSE OF 

ness, suggest a real, enduring, perfect one. 
The idea of rest, the name of rest was fastened 
on, declared to be sacred, emphasized with all 
the sanctions of religion. That of itself was a 
great thing. The result must be, that after a 
while they would discover that no twenty-four 
hours' rest of body, merely, could exhaust the 
meaning of that sacred word, or meet the full 
requirements of that high idea. 

But this was not all. The mysterious fact 
on which we pondered a week ago was linked 
inseparably to this day. It spoke of God's rest. 
The Hebrew people had a most imperfect no- 
tion, probably a gross, and often a wrong notion 
of what God's rest is. But it was a great thing 
that the word could be connected anyhow with 
God. Already the idea of rest becomes im- 
mensely dignified and enlarged, by the mere 
fact that it belongs in any sense, however feebly 
understood, to him. And thus enlarged and 
dignified, it must sooner or later lift the people 
who receive it up above the world of sense, into 
the world of spirit. 



THE JEWISH SABBATH. 43 

But this was not all. This Jewish Sabbath 
had another association connected with it. 
When men asked " What does this day mean ? " 
and " Why was it ordained ? " one answer 
would be the one on which we have just been 
meditating, "Because God rested." That is 
the reason given in the book of Exodus. That 
was, probably enough, the religious truth which 
Abraham had handed clown along the genera- 
tions to the lawgiver Moses. But it is not 
probable that this fact was commemorated by 
what I have called a monumental day, until the 
exodus from Egypt. Probably Abraham knew 
that God had created, and that God had rested. 
But probably Abraham did not celebrate God's 
rest by a weekly Sabbath. There is only a very 
slender and unsatisfactory sum of evidence, 
only the very thinnest film of proof, to show 
that any weekly Sabbath was observed before 
the time of Moses.* But wdien, after the long 

* Probably the best summary of the argument on this 
point is to be found inHessey's " Bampton Lectures" (1860), 
to which volume and to the authorities copiously quoted 
therein, it is sufficient to refer any readers who may desire 



44 THE PURPOSE OF 

years of slavery in Egypt, this oppressed and 
tired race of bondmen were emancipated ; when 
the centuries of degrading toil were ended, and 
the tribes went forth, to look no more upon the 
hateful brick yards where they and their fathers 
before them had worn out weary lives, and to 
hear no more the harsh voices of their cruel 
taskmasters ; when, with new-formed hopes 
stirring within them and the dawning con- 
sciousness of nationality dignifying them, they 
were marching toward a land which they might 
hope to call their own, a goodly land, a land of 
hills and valleys, a land of milk and honey ; 
then there was ordained this Sabbath day, 
which should always speak to them and to the 
generations after them, of slavery and rest from 
slavery, of toil and rest from toil, of degradation 
and deliverance from degradation, of sorrow 

to inform themselves concerning it. Quotations are given 
in still greater detail (especially from theologians since the 
Eeformation) in Cox's u Literature on the Sabbath Question " 
— a book of marvellous learning and research. But the 
narration in this sixteenth chapter of Exodus speaks for 
itself so clearly that it scarcely needs much comment. 



THE JEWISH SABBATH. 45 

changed to joy, of trouble ending in exceeding 
blessedness. 

Thus it was and then it was that this seventh 
day Sabbath was instituted. It was in the 
wilderness. I read the story of it in the chap- 
ter from the book of Exodus this morning. 
(Chap, xvi.) The people had come out of 
Egypt exultant and rejoicing that their toil 
was over ; there was no more work for them, 
thenceforth, they thought ; they were free at 
last from the weary servitude of centuries. It 
is easy to conceive the gratulation which in- 
spired them as they thought of this ; it is easy 
to conceive what present meaning this word 
" rest " would have for them, and how it would 
seem of all words the sweetest. But they had 
not been long started on their journey before 
they found that they were very far from being 
yet at rest. As soon as they were fairly in the 
wilderness, and the enthusiasm of their deliver- 
ance was over, and the hardships of the journey 
through the desert began to make themselves 
felt, they began to grumble and despond, and 



46 THE PURPOSE OF 

to say that this was worse than Egypt, and to 
wish that they were back again. They had not 
found the rest they thought they had. Want 
and hunger and toilsome journeying had come 
upon them instead. And they murmured 
against their leaders. 

Something had to be done, now, to meet 
the exigency, and to teach this fickle, ignorant, 
childish people patience and faith. So God 
sent the quails and the manna, and they were 
fed ; but with this provision of necessary food 
came also, by inspired wisdom, the ordinance 
of the Sabbath-clay. When the sixth day came, 
they were to gather food for two days, and to 
rest upon the seventh. On the seventh day, if 
they went out to look for manna, as some dis- 
orderly persons did, they conld not find it, be- 
cause there was none to find. This seventh 
clay was to speak to them of rest ; was to be a 
constant prophecy of rest; to cheer their discon- 
tented spirits ; to encourage their distrustful 
hearts. It was to say to them, so often as it 
came, " The promise which was given to you of 



THE JEWISH SABBATH. 47 

entering into rest shall not be unfulfilled. A 
rest remains for you. You have come out of 
Egypt forever ; and though you are in the 
wilderness still, and have hardships and dis- 
comforts and fatigues to endure, plenty of them, 
do not be discouraged, there is verily a rest in 
store, surely a rest remains. Take heart and 
trust in Gocl for it." This was what the seventh 
day declared to them so often as it came. 

Naturally enough, they at first supposed 
this promise was to be fulfilled as soon as they 
should get out of the wilderness. They used 
to say to themselves, probably, while they were 
wandering through those perilous deserts, " This 
is hard • but let us wait until we enter Canaan : 
it will all be over then. Then we shall be at 
rest. That is a goodly land, beautiful, w^ell 
watered, rich and bountiful, and more than all, 
our own. Wait till we get there. It will all 
be over then. And then we will be at rest." 

So, after forty years of toilsome wandering, 
and after one whole generation of the people 
had been worn out in the desert, the long look- 



48 THE PURPOSE OF 

ed for day arrived. They crossed the boundary 
river and they entered into the goodly land. It 
was indeed a goodly land, but it was not a land 
of rest to them. Beset by foes on every hand, 
compelled to fight for standing ground with 
enemies not few nor feeble, they had but a 
stormy and unrestful time of it. And presently 
the truth began to dawn on them that Joshua, 
their new leader, had not given them rest any 
more than Moses had ; that the rest, the true 
rest, the rest which their souls needed was not 
to be had even here, was not, at least, to be 
had yet. But all the time this seventh day 
kept coming, with its significant name, with its 
clustering associations, with its mysterious ref- 
erence to the rest of God, with its historic con- 
nection with their deliverance from bondage. 
Surely this must mean something. They had 
not found its meaning yet, but they could not 
help believing that it had a meaning. So the 
Sabbath day remained a constant and illusive 
prophecy. 

And so the years rolled by, and still con 



THE JEWISH SABBATH. 49 

tinual wars harassed them ; and if for a little 
time there came a season of prosperity, it was 
broken up again by some calamity; just as 
though the Sabbath came at intervals of seven 
days, to bring repose to tired bodies and to 
toiling hands, to master, and to servant, and to 
cattle, yet it was soon over, and the weary 
round of work-clay labor, and of fighting, and of 
troubles, would begin again. Until in David's 
time, (or a little later,) the " rest " was seen to 
be still future, and more remote and vague than 
ever ; and they had ceased to look for it so con- 
fidently as temporal and earthly. Still the sev- 
enth day returned and kept returning, but to 
the more thoughtful and spiritually minded of 
the people it was now prophetic of things high- 
er, things unseen, things scarcely to be defined 
in speech. That sublime call to worship in the 
ninety-fifth psalm, indicates this growth and 
discipline of the people, and their exaltation to 
a higher standpoint. " Let us worship and 
fall down," the psalmist says, " let us bow be- 
fore the Lord our Maker." He created us. 
3 



50 THE PURPOSE OP 

He is leading us. He has rest in store for us. 
What it is we know not. Many have failed of 
it. But it still remains. I think the very 
structure of this psalm is full of eloquent sugges- 
tion. It begins with a burst of worshipful 
acclamation ; but it sinks to silent reverence and 
awe, and closes in a hush of mingled fear 
and hope on that word "rest," — as if the 
meaning of it could not perfectly be uttered. 

So this thought of rest kept growing strong- 
er, even although it was growing higher and 
seemingly more distant. It was a thought 
which never lost its hold upon the people. It 
was the central thought of their religious sys- 
tem. Six days they might forget it, but on 
the seventh they remembered it. The idea 
was so wedged into their religious observances 
that it could not possibly be taken out without 
the dislocation of them all. The weekly Sab- 
bath was not the only Sabbath. There was a 
Sabbath of weeks as well as of days ; and a 
Sabbath of months ; and a great, memorable, 
wonderful Sabbath of years, — of rest for a 



THE JEWISH SABBATH. 51 

whole year, every fiftieth year* The Sabbath 
of days pointed to the Sabbath of weeks ; and 
this again to the Sabbath of months ; and this 
again to the Sabbath of years ; and this — to 
what ? Could it be that the mind of the He- 
brew people, led on and up, thus far, would stop 
here ? Would it not almost of necessity rise 
higher yet, — even from earth to heaven ? Or 
let me put the case a little differently. The 
seventh day in its weekly return reminded 
them of rest from slavery, of rescue from Egypt, 
of repose in Canaan. But this, — had this no 
higher meaning ? was this all ? Was there not 
a better Canaan, a happier land, a repose more 
perfect, where no foes could enter, where no 
evils could annoy, where no sorrows could 
trouble, where no death could kill ? And then 
would come the thought — there must be such a 
rest, for we are told that God rested ; and 
surely his rest can be no fitful, transient, 
troubled rest, like ours. 

* Exodus xxiii. 10, 11, 12, 13 : cf. especially Leviticus 
xxiii. vss. 3, 15, 24, 33-39 : xxv. 1-24 : xxvi. 2 : Dent. xv. 



52 THE PURPOSE OF 

It will not be possible, within the limits of 
one sermon, to finish our examination of the 
Hebrew Sabbath. Already it is evident that 
there is much to be learned from a wise study 
of it. All that I have tried to do, to-day, is to 
set forth the purpose of that Sabbath, and the 
meaning of it. And for that reason I took for 
my text, not the commandment as it is written 
in Exodus, but the commandment as it is writ- 
ten in Deuteronomy. The reason for the Jew- 
ish Sabbath which is given in Exodus, is the 
rest of God. The reason for it given in the 
book of Deuteronomy, is the rest in Canaan. 
But from both books it is evident that the 
seventh-day Sabbath was not ordained for its 
own sake merely, but for some other and higher 
reason. It was a day of prophecy. It was a 
day of promise. Week after week it came to 
this Hebrew people, and found them sinful, 
toilsome, tired still. Generation after genera- 
tion they lived in Canaan, and this day return- 
ing found them troubled, restless, sinful still. 
Centuries of hard experience taught them more 



THE JEWISH SABBATH. 53 

and more perfectly the bitter lesson which found 
expression, at last, in the words of one of their 
own prophets, that the " wicked are like the 
troubled sea, which cannot rest." They could 
not rest. They were not at peace with God. 
Their kings and soldiers and legislators — 
David, Joshua, Moses — had not given them rest, 
could not give them rest. And yet here the 
day was, coming, coming, in its regular return, 
and coming only to be a mockery, a bitter 
mockery, unless there was a real rest remain- 
ing. So they clung to the persuasion that 
there was such a rest. And at last the son of 
David came, another Joshua, a prophet greater 
than Moses, bringing grace and truth, and life, 
and rest eternal. Then the significance of all 
these monumental days and rites and cere- 
monies became apparent. 

Of course then, the seventh day was not the 
Sabbath, is not the Sabbath. The Sabbath is 
not a day of twenty-four hours, at all. The 
seventh day may be a Sabbath ; or the first day 
may be a Sabbath, if there is any reason for 



54 THE PURPOSE OF 

making it so, as we shall by and by find there 
is a most sufficient reason ; any day may be a 
Sabbath, as John Calvin, at the time of the Ref- 
ormation seems to have proposed, most unwisely, 
to make Thursday a Sabbath ; * or better still, 
every day of Christian life may be a Sabbath, — 
the type and prophecy, nay more, the earnest and 
foretaste of the eternal rest. If the Sabbath of 
God be a mere twenty -four hours' rest, then it 
must be the seventh day • and I do not see 
how any logic can escape the obligation to ac- 
knowledge it, or bridge the insuperable chasm 
which, on that theory, separates the seventh clay 
from the first and from all others. But if 
the Sabbath be eternal in the heavens, and all 
days of time but shadowy types of that eternal 
day, then, whether it may be the seventh day 
that men commemorate, or the first day, or any 
day, or every day, can make no fatal difference. 
Nor is this all. The story of the wandering 
of these Hebrew tribes is not without its present 
and most practical significance to us, — the story 

* Cf. Hessey, p. 142, and Cox. vol. 2, p. 121. 



THE JEWISH SABBATH. 55 

of their wanderings and of their disappointments 
and of their illusive types and shadows. " These 
things " said an Apostle,* " were our examples . 
* * and they are written for our admonition, upon 
whom the ends of the world are come/ 5 Have 
we not also wandered in deserts and in wilder- 
nesses, restless and unsatisfied ? Have not we 
been seeking rest in God's creatures and not in 
God in himself? Have we not tried to be 
content with shadows rather than with the eter- 
nal substance of the Sabbath? And have we 
not learned— some of us, I am sure, have learned 
at last, — that there is rest for us only in God ? 
We have learned, at last, to say with Saint 
Augustine, "Thou hast made us for thyself, 
and our heart is restless till it rest in thee." 
Let us remember, then, that earth cannot fur- 
nish us the perfect Sabbath, — that time does 
not contain it. It is the rest of God. It is 
eternal in the heavens. 

This is the practical and important lesson 
with which I suspend this meditation. And to 

* 1 Cor. x. 1-11. * Confessions, i. 1. 



56 THE PURPOSE OF 

sum up and enforce what I have been trying to 
say, I borrow these stanzas, antique and quaint, 
but very beautiful and very true, from good 
George Herbert. The lesson which was taught 
the Hebrew people in their weekly Sabbath, the 
lesson which we need to learn by all our per- 
sonal human experiences, is the lesson which 
this poem also teaches, in language better than 
I can find : 



When God at first made man, 
Having a glasse of blessings standing by ; 
Let ns (said be) poure on him all we can : 
Let the world's riches, which dispersed lie, 
Contract into a span. 

So strength first made a way ; 

Then beautie flow'd, then wisdome, honor, pleasure: 
When almost all was out, God made a stay, 
Perceiving that alone, of all his treasure, 
Eest in the bottome lay. 

For, if I should (said he) 

Bestow tbis Jewell also on my creature, 

He would adore my gifts instead of me, 



THE JEWISH SABBATH. 57 

And rest in nature, not the God of nature: 
So both should losers be. 

Yet let him keep the rest, 
But heep them with repining restlesnesse : 
Let him be rich and wearie, that at least, 
If goodnesse leade him not, yet wearinesse 
May tosse him to my breast. 



III. 

THE USE AND ABUSE 

OF 

THE JEWISH SABBATH. 



THE USE AND ABUSE OF THE JEWISH 
SABBATH. 



Therefore said some of the Pharisees, This man is not 
of God, because he keepeth not the Sabbath-day. 

Johx ix. 16. 

What then had this man clone by which 
the Sabbath-day was violated ? And who was 
he who w T as proved thus to be " not of God ? " 

The story is familiar to us all. It was Jesus 
of Nazareth, the young prophet of Galilee, con- 
cerning whom some men had already begun to 
believe that he was the Messiah. It was now 
more than two years since he had begun his 
public ministry as a religious teacher, and 
during all this time he had been conspicuous 
among men for words of singular wisdom, for 
deeds of very beautiful and tender compassion, 
and of wonderful power, — in a word, for a life 
spent in doing good. No one could lay to his 



62 THE USE AND ABUSE OF 

charge an unkind, dishonorable or selfish act. 
No one could accuse him of immorality, or of 
any violation of the law of love. He had ene- 
mies, to be sure, plenty of them — bitter ones ; 
enemies quick to detect iniquity in him, had 
there been iniquity ; enemies who were con- 
spiring against him, and on one pretext or 
another, continually denouncing him as un- 
trustworthy and bad. They could not charge 
him with violating any moral law ; but they 
could charge him with neglect of traditional 
ceremonies. They could not deny that he heal- 
ed sick men; but they could insist that he 
healed them in some irregular way, or by some 
malign power. If they were obliged to con- 
fess, sometimes, that he had done good, at least 
thev could criticise his methods and condemn 
as evil the place, the time, or some attendant 
circumstance. It is always instructive to know 
what a man's enemies say of him. And when 
they can find no charge to produce, except a 
quibble or a technicality, when they can say 
nothing against the spirit of a man, but only 



THE JEWISH SABBATH. 63 

something against his forms, — such as a viola- 
tion of usage or tradition or ceremonial rite, — 
the fact is most significant. 

Such an instance was the one referred to in 
the text. Jesus, passing along through the 
streets of Jerusalem, had seen an unfortunate 
man who had been blind from his birth. Be- 
sides the calamity of blindness, there attached 
to him also some stigma of moral disgrace, as if 
his blindness must be the result of special and 
preeminent sinfulness, either on his own part 
or on the part of his parents, — so that the man 
was made out to be not merely unfortunate, 
but infamous. "We need not pursue the story, 
except to say that Jesus rejected peremptorily 
the notion that the man's blindness was the 
mark of any conspicuous sinfulness ; and then, 
by an act of gracious power, removed the life- 
long darkness by which he had been afflicted; 
doing thus a double service to the unhappy 
man, and sending him away thankful and as- 
tonished. 

Certainly this was a kind and gracious thing 



64 THE USE AND ABUSE OF 

to do ; and certainly, the wisdom which Christ 
had shown in his exposure of the cruel notion 
held by his disciples and by the community at 
large, the power which he had shown in the 
miracle of healing, the love which he had shown 
in his treatment of the sufferer, all these might 
have secured the approval of the Pharisees, and 
might have seemed to them, sitting as the reli- 
gious authorities of the nation, like credentials 
of a divine mission on the part of Jesus. But 
as it happened, the day on which this deed had 
been performed, was the weekly Sabbath, on 
which, according to the commandment, there 
must be no work performed. To open the eyes 
of the blind was work— thus they argued ; 
and even our Lord himself seemed to admit 
it, — for when he did the miracle it was with 
the solemn words, " I must work the works of 
him that sent me, while it is day.' 5 So, then, 
this was work ; but the commandment forbids 
work on the Sabbath; but this was on the 
Sabbath ; therefore Jesus has not kept God's 
commandment; therefore he cannot be of God, 



THE JEWISH SABBATH. 65 

— and being not of God, no further hint was 
needful to indicate whence, in their opinion, he 
must be. All the wisdom of his words, all the 
power and skill of his deed, all the loving and 
pure compassion of his spirit, was to pass for 
nothing, because he did not keep the Sabbath- 
day ! Or rather let us say, because he did not 
keep it as they thought it should be kept ; be- 
cause his opinions did not square with theirs ; 
because his manners were not strict enough, 
according to their standard. 

I wish to take this story as giving us a 
glimpse of how the Jewish Sabbath was regard- 
ed in the time of Christ, and of the strict and 
literal exactness with which the command to 
keep it holy was observed ; an exactness so 
strict and literal, that it might even make the 
day unholy, irksome, evil. Remember that the 
Pharisees were the religious teachers of the 
people, sitting, as our Lord said, in Moses' seat, 
and looked up to as the recognized and authori- 
tative expounders of the law. Remember also 
that this was not the only instance when they 



66 THE USE AND ABUSE OF 

found fault with Jesus as a Sabbath-breaker. 
Over and over again this charge was brought, 
and in such a way as indicates that they were 
very much in earnest in it, and even believed 
themselves to be in the right in making it. On 
the other hand, our Lord himself seems to have 
been in no way careful to avoid giving occasion 
for the charge, even taking pains, sometimes to 
do things publicly upon the Sabbath-day which 
he knew T might be complained of and brought up 
against him. And his reply to the Pharisees, 
when they made the charge, was not that he 
was justified in violating the Sabbath, but that 
he had not violated the Sabbath. He acknowl- 
edged that he was still a Jew, and that it was 
becoming in him to fulfil all righteousness. So 
he was circumcised. So he was baptized by 
John. So he offered sacrifice and observed 
festivals. So he conformed to the law of Moses, 
and, as I say, the way in which he defended 
himself, the ground which he took in reply to 
this accusation, was that he had not broken the 
Sabbath, but had kept it. 



THE JEWISH SABBATH. 67 

Which was right, — he or they ? Was the 
Jewish Sabbath what they made it, or was it 
what he made it ? And if they were wrong, 
wherein did their mistake consist, 

We cannot hesitate, of course, in our answer 
to the first question. And the answer to the 
first involves the answer to the second. The 
Jewish Sabbath was meant to be a privilege. 
The Pharisees had made it a bondage. It was 
meant to be a holy day. But the Pharisees, by 
such interpretation of its holiness as they 
would have enforced on Jesus, made it an un- 
holy day; so that, though upon six days it might 
be lawful to do good, upon the seventh to do 
good was not lawful, and such an act as the 
opening a blind man's eyes became wicked. 
The Sabbath was meant to be a means. They 
would make it an end, of itself. God designed 
it as a sign of something higher. They treated 
it as if it were itself the thing signified. As I 
said a week ago, it was a Sabbath, but not the 
perfect, the real Sabbath. The trouble with 
them was, that they treated it as if it were the 



68 THE USE AND ABUSE OF 

real and perfect Sabbath. They are not the only 
ones who have fallen into this error, and have 
rested in the letter rather than in the spirit ; have 
been content with the body rather than with the 
soul of things ; have grasped at the shadow and 
let go the substance ; have stopped short with 
things seen and temporal, and not looked at the 
things which are unseen and eternal. 

This was the difference between Christ and 
the Pharisees. Christ's reverence for the law of 
Moses was not less than theirs ; it was unspeak- 
ably greater. He did not come to destroy it, 
he came to fulfil it. He saw, and he aimed to 
show, that the spirit of that law was greater than 
the letter of it could hold, and must, presently, 
throw off the letter as a husk and hindrance 
of its greatness. Guide-posts are good while 
one is journeying, but he does not need them 
when he has reached his journey's end. Hope 
is good, till one has the fruition of the thing 
hoped for, and then it ceases to be necessary. 
So the Jewish types and prophecies were good 
until the realities of which they spoke arrived, 



THE JEWISH SABBATH. 69 

and then they were no longer useful. The time 
was close at hand when all these should pass 
away, — close at hand, but not yet quite present. 
Men were Jews yet. Even our Lord himself 
was a Jew, observing the Jewish law. He was 
in the flesh, as yet. And though he was him- 
self the truth to which all these types and monu- 
ments and ordinances pointed, yet the veil, that 
is to say his flesh, hid him for the present. In 
a little while he would be lifted up ; the veil, 
that is to say his flesh, would be laid aside ; he 
would be present in the Spirit, nearer, every- 
where, always, — and then the ordinances were 
to cease. But as yet they were to be observed, 
and he himself set the example of perfect obser- 
vance. 

One of these types and ordinances was the 
seventh-day Sabbath. Presently that was to 
cease. But it had not ceased, as yet. It was 
a good thing, a useful type, a pleasant promise, 
a most serviceable means. It was made for 
man. And the true way to reverence it was to 
use it as a privilege, to employ it as a means. 



70 THE USE AND ABUSE OF 

Without doubt Jesus rested on the seventh day, 
and was glad enough to rest. Without doubt, 
when the six days were over, with their trials in 
the carpenter's shop, or with their weary round 
of journeyings from village to village, with their 
thronging multitudes claiming his care and 
time and painful anxiety, — without doubt this 
seventh day was a blessed day to the fatigued 
and tired teacher and his twelve friends and fol- 
lowers. No doubt the privileges of the syna- 
gogue, with its worship, public and formal, of 
the God of Israel, were welcome. No doubt 
he rested from his weekly duties and employ- 
ments, counting it a privilege and even a duty 
so to rest. But if the Pharisees attempted to 
compel him to the observance of their foolish 
and unscriptural strictnesses : to say that, if he 
saw a blind man whom he could give sight to, 
he must let him stay blind ; if he saw a sick 
man, that he must not heal him ; if he passed 
hungry through the corn-fields, that he must 
not pluck, in passing, a few ears to eat, because 
all this was work ; then he would say, that the 



THE JEWISH SABBATH. 71 

Pharisees were trying to make the command- 
ment of God of none effect "by their traditions, 
and were abusing the Sabbath instead of using 
it. 

It is probable that we have, even at this day, 
a mistaken impression concerning the Jewish 
Sabbath. From the repeated emphasis which 
is put upon the observance of it hi the Hebrew 
Scriptures ; from the penalties which, by the 
Jewish law, were threatened and sometimes en- 
forced upon the violation of it ; from a false idea 
of what keeping a thing holy means, and of 
wherein holiness consists ; from these and other 
causes we have accustomed ourselves to believe 
that it was an irksome day, a sad and gloomy 
day, a fast, a day on which to afflict one's soul. 
It was not such a day. To make it such a day 
was to abuse it. If it was defended by penal- 
ties, it was for the same reason that a per- 
verse child is prevented by penalties from over- 
exertino- himself in any way. or from runnino- 
into any kind of danger. To read of a man 
stoned for £atherin°; sticks on the Sabbath may 



72 THE USE AND ABUSE OE 

startle us at first, and may make it look as if the 
clay were a harsh and severe institution. But 
it was because the day was so beneficent that 
the crime of a man who undertook to destroy it 
was so heinous. Moses was very much in ear- 
nest, had to be very much in earnest ; and he 
was not willing that an institution which was 
given to be a blessing to the nation, through 
generation after generation, should be destroyed 
at the very outset by one rebellious and mis- 
chievous man. So he had him put to death, 
and made of him a conspicuous example that 
was remembered through all coming time, so 
long as the Jews were a nation. But we make 
a great mistake if we suppose that because the 
penalties which guarded and preserved the day 
were severe, therefore the day itself was severe. 
The one only commandment concerning it was, 

* Numbers xv., 82-36. It is to be observed that this, 
the only recorded instance of the infliction of the death- 
penalty for Sabbath-breaking, occurred " while the chil- 
dren of Israel were in the wilderness," — when the Sabbath 
was as yet a new thing, and the value of it needed to be 
signally emphasized. 



THE JEWISH SABBATH. 73 

that it should be a rest-day. No possible lan- 
guage could have conveyed to that nation of 
emancipated slaves a gladder idea of it than that 
it was a day on which they need not work. 
They knew what work was, with a very sorrow- 
ful knowledge indeed ; but, for centuries, they 
had hardly known what rest was. And an ordi- 
nance which ordained for them a seventh part of 
their whole time, during which they need not 
work, but might sleep, and recreate and enjoy 
themselves, with the assurance that in so doing 
they were doing nothing wrong, but were even 
performing a sacred duty, with the knowledge 
that they were pleasing God by thus being hap- 
py, — this was a privilege so beneficent, a boon 
so gracious, that, when fairly understood, it could 
not fail to be a very welcome and most precious 
ordinance. 

If it seems to some that the injunction against 
work must have made the day a fast-day, it may 
be worth while to say a word or two upon that 
point. They could not, it is true, cook on the 
Sabbath-day ; but to a rude and simple people 



74 THE USE AND ABUSE OF 

that was no great deprivation. They could eat, 
and they could even feast. * Social visiting was 
not forbidden, nor the giving of a feast, provid- 
ed the feast involved no labor on the part of 
master or of servant in the household. In the 
statement of the law of the Sabbath given in 
Deuteronomy, the reason why there could be no 
cooking appears — " that thy man-servant and thy 
maid-servant may rest as well as thou." It was 
not at all that the day should thus be made a 
fast- day. And it must be remembered that, in 
those early times and among that rude and 
simple people, cooking had not become a fine 
art ; and it was thought possible to exist and 
even to be happy upon very simple fare. 
Whether the change which has taken place 
since then, and the difference between our usages 

* The incident recorded in Luke xiv., 1-24, especially 
verse 7, indicating that the feast was on a somewhat large 
scale, is sufficiently decisive on this point. But see also Al- 
ford's note on this passage, — and Trench (on the parable of 
"The Great Supper" ; also the authorities quoted by Cox y 
under the article " Feasting on the Sabbath ; " also the ar- 
ticle li Sabbath" in " Smith's Dictionary of the Bible ;" also 
the noteworthy article on "The Talmud," in the London 
Quarterly Review for October, 1867, Am. Ed., p. 232. 



THE JEWISH SABBATH. 75 

and tastes and theirs, is wholly an advance, it is 
foreign to the scope of this discourse to dis- 
cuss. 

What I am insisting on is, that the seventh- 
day rest which Moses enjoined upon the Jewish, 
people was designed to be a blessing and not a 
bondage. It was to be a symbol of a greater 
blessing in store for them, but it was also to be 
itself a blessing. It could scarcely speak to them 
of happiness hereafter, if it were not itself happy. 
It was to be made holy; but holiness did not 
mean austerity nor acerbity nor asceticism. It 
was to be a pure day, a clean day, or, as the 
word translated " holy " may suggest by its deri- 
vation,* a bright day ; if you please, a shining or 
sunny day. Its cheerfulness was to prophesy 
the cheerfulness of heaven. Its social enjoy- 
ments were to suggest the fellowship of heaven. 
To be happy on this clay was a privilege, nay, 
was even a duty. And you cannot find in all 
the law of Moses any thing that even looks like 
making it a hardship. Was it any hardship to 

* See Gesenius' Lexicon s. v. EHp, and the perhaps kin- 
dred Enn, of which the primary idea is " to be bright." 



76 THE USE AND ABUSE OF 

that people, aching in all their bones with their 
centuries of unpaid toil, to be told that they 
might rest ?* We know how a slave feels when 
he is told that he may have a holiday. We 
know how a school-boy feels when he is told 
that he may have a recess. To tell him that he 
must not study till the recess is over, to even 
impose a penalty upon him for doing so, is no 
such very dreadful thing. 

Unquestionably, this seventh-day Sabbath be- 
gan to lose something of its original character, 
long before the time of the Gospel history. 
Studying the Old Testament, we discover on the 
one hand a growing formality, on the other hand 
a growing superstition. It was characteristic 
of that Hebrew people, it is characteristic of all 
peoples more or less, to run from one extreme 
to another. After they came to be settled in 

* A striking illustration of this is to be found in a fact re- 
lated by an observant traveller concerning the slaves in the 
Southern States. ISTo hymn sung in their religious meet- 
ings was more popular than u Welcome, sweet day of rest." 
At a Sunday-morning prayer-meeting it would sometimes 
be sung three or four times over in the course of the 
hour. 



THE JEWISH SABBATH. 77 

their own laud, and had begun to feel the pride 
of prosperity, and to forget the hardships of their 
Egyptian slavery, it was not pleasant to be re- 
minded all the time of that degrading fact. 
When a man gets to be rich he does not like to 
be reminded that he was once poor. When a 
man has achieved distinction of any sort, he will 
not thank you to tell him that he or his father 
was once a very humble and ordinary man. It 
hurts his pride. So with this people. They 
were not very fond of remembering that they 
were servants in the land of Egypt. But 
this was what their seventh-day Sabbath was 
designed to remind them of, through all genera- 
tions. So it became convenient to them, pres- 
ently, to fix their attention upon the day rather 
than upon what it commemorated. So, too, 
when they w r ere engrossed with earthly things, 
had waxed fat and sordid, and had learned the 
vices of prosperity, it was not pleasant to have 
this seventh day come pricking in upon their 
luxury and sloth and sensuality, and reminding 
them that here was not their rest, — that their 



78 THE USE AND ABUSE OF 

true rest was beyond, that their real rest was 
above. So, for this reason also, it was conve- 
nient to fix their attention on the day itself and 
not on what it prophesied. The day was meant 
to point backward and to point forward. But 
it was not pleasant for this ungrateful and sor- 
did people to look either way. Backward was 
Egypt and the disgrace of slavery. Forward 
was — who cared for what was forward? " Let 
us eat and drink and be merry " here and now, 
we need no other rest ! 

So, easily enough, naturally enough, the day 
came to be either a merely formal thing or else 
a dreadfully superstitious thing. It had come 
to be a mere form in the time of the prophet 
Isaiah. The people had ignored its meaning ; 
and though they kept up the show of its obser- 
vance, they considered it a bore, and they made 
of it a mockery. So that God is represented 
as saying to them at the begining of Isaiah's 
prophecy,* in indignant and sorrowful reproof, 
"Bring no more vain oblations ; * * * the new 

* Chap. i. : 13, 14. 



THE JEWISH SABBATH. 79 

moons and Sabbaths * * I cannot away with. 
* * * Your new moons and your appointed 
feasts my soul hateth." Their religious ob- 
servances, of which the Sabbath was the central 
and most conspicuous institution, had come to be 
a mere form. They meant nothing, expressed 
nothing, suggested nothing. The soul had gone 
out of them, and though, the body remained it 
was a dry and dead body. The Sabbath was 
no longer " a delight, — the holy of the Lord, and 
honorable." 

A still more perfect picture of this merely 
formal observance of the Jewish Sabbath is sug- 
ested by a passage in the book of the prophet 
Amos. This prophet was a contemporary of 
Isaiah, and his exhortations to the nation are 
prompted by the same circumstances, the same 
sins, the same errors, which give point to the 
prophecies of Isaiah. The selfish and corrupt 
people are described (ch. viii. : 5, 6) as fretting 
beneath the Sabbath rest, as if it were a yoke 
imposed upon them, and as having turned what 
was a privilege into a meaningless and irksome 



80 THE USE AJSTD ABUSE OF 

formality. "When will the new moon be 
gone/' they say, " that we may sell corn ? and 
the Sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, 
making the ephah small and the shekel great," 
(giving scant measure and charging a large price,) 
" and falsifying the balances by deceit ? " Here, 
even in a more striking form than in the pas- 
sages before quoted, is the picture of a Sabbath 
which had lost all significance, which commemo- 
rated nothing, which pointed forward to nothing, 
which was without value or charm; a monu- 
ment from which the inscription had been ob- 
literated ; a guide-post which pointed no way. 
Cherished for itself alone — when it was cherish- 
ed at all — it had become distasteful to men 
and a mockery to God. 

Well, the result of this religious declension, 
of which the contempt of the Sabbath was the 
most conspicuous instance, was disaster and 
captivity to the nation. Since they had learned 
to hold the thought of rest so cheap, they 
should be sent to school again to learn the value 
of it. Captivity in Egypt had made it very wel- 



THE JEWISH SABBATH. 81 

come once ; perhaps captivity in Assyria might 
make it very welcome again. And so there 
came upon the Jews that period of exile and 
disgrace, seventy years of sorrow and humilia- 
tion and hardship.* When they came back 
again into their own land, they began to observe 
the Sabbath with renewed zeal. Stricter and 
more detailed regulations for its observance 
were enjoined by Nehemiah.f But the signifi- 
cance of the day as a religious privilege was 
never quite regained. And presently the ob- 
servance of it, enforced thus by the strong arm 
of the law, began to degenerate into supersti- 
tion. The headstrong nation had not learned 
its lesson yet. They had learned that to give 
up their Sabbath was not safe. But they had 
not learned that their Sabbath was a blessing, 
and not a bondage. So they kept the day, but 
they kept it under terror. They began to in- 
vent new laws concerning it. The comprehen- 
sive law of Moses, which insisted simply and 
broadly, that on this day every one should have 

*2 Chron. xxxvi. : 21. t Neh. x. : 31, xiii. : 15, 22. 

4* 



82 THE USE AND ABUSE OF 

the right to rest, was thought to be insufficient. 
Stricter and stricter were the lines of obliga- 
tion drawn, till, a little while before the time of 
our Saviour, during the progress of the Macca- 
bean wars, a thousand Jews, brave but mis- 
taken men, were slain without resistance on the 
Sabbath day, because the superstitious rigor 
which had grown up since the captivity made 
them think it unlawful to defend themselves.* 
Such a thing could scarcely have occurred in 
the time of Moses. It was a rigorous observ- 
ance of the letter, and the letter killed. 

This incident, indeed, gave to the super- 
stitious notion concerning the Sabbath a great 
shock, but it did not cure it. The Scribes and 
Pharisees kept binding burdens heavier and 
heavier all the time, till in the time of our Lord 
they were most grievous to be borne. One 
school of zealots even taught that in whatever 
posture the Sabbath-clay should overtake a man, 
in that posture he must remain till the day was 
over ; if standing when the sun set on Friday 

* 1 Mace. ii. : 38; and Josephns Antiq., B. xii., eh. vi 2. 



THE JEWISH SABBATH. 83 

evening, then let him stand till Saturday at 
evening ; if sitting, let him sit still, because to 
rise was to work. I might multiply instances, 
some of them so trivial that they would be even 
unfit to mention, of this same literalism, of this 
superstitious bondage to the seventh day. 

I do not say that all these notions were cur- 
rent among the Pharisees and endorsed by 
them ; but they are extreme examples of what 
was the prevalent Pharisaic error. To open 
the eyes of a blind man on the Sabbath-day, 
was a crime so great that the goodness of the 
deed must pass for nothing, — this was the posi- 
tion which they held. The day was positively 
made unholy, by being reverenced for itself and 
not for what it signified. They made an idol 
of it. They acted as if this day of twenty-four 
hours was what men were made for, and as if 
they should expend their energies in its obser- 
vance. 

I have drawn out this history at a good deal 
of length, to show wherein the mistake of the 
Pharisees consisted. They had not used the 



84 THE USE AND ABUSE OF 

Sabbath; they had suffered it to use them. 
They had swerved from the Mosaic command- 
ment, by making the sign conspicuous and 
losing sight of the thing signified. Kept for 
itself, as a dry ordinance, it was worse than use- 
less. It did not turn their thoughts backward 
along the way through which the Lord their 
God had led them ; nor did it turn their 
thoughts forward, telescopically opening up eter- 
nity before them. It was an institution to be 
microscopically scrutinized, to be given to God 
because he had arbitrarily demanded it, to be 
literally kepi, although the letter might be irk- 
some, cruel, deadly. 

It was not so to Jesus. He appealed from 
the Pharisees to Moses ; from the letter to the 
spirit. He showed how the Sabbath was a 
means, and not an end ; was to be observed as 
a privilege and as a prophecy of the eternal 
Sabbath, and not to be worn as a yoke of bond- 
age, bowing men's faces down to earth instead 
of raising them to heaven. Such a privilege 
and prophecy it was to him. How he must 



THE JEWISH SABBATH. 85 

have prized its welcome rest, when, footsore, 
w r eary, burdened, almost broken-hearted with 
the heavy load of human griefs and sicknesses 
which he had taken on himself to carry, and with 
no time that he could call his own, this clay 
would come with opportunities for quiet, for 
retirement, for religious worship in the syna- 
gogue, or on the mountains, or in whatever 
solitudes might be found, and for fellowship 
with the few friends who loved and trusted him! 
And what wonderful and pathetic sacredness of 
meaning must the day have had to him, — 
speaking to him, as it did, of that other Jesus, 
who, centuries before, had led his people over 
Jordan into Canaan, but had not been able, 
after all, to give them rest, — speaking to him 
also of the rest from sin into w r hich he himself 
had come to gather them ! 

Brethren, this Jewish Sabbath is a thing of 
the past. It w r as a prophecy, a type, a shadow. 
It is, as I shall presently show, no longer bind- 
ing. But if we think there are no lessons to be 
taught us by the history of it, w r e shall strangely 



86 THE USE AND ABUSE OF 

err. Tor the mistake of the Pharisees has been 
reproduced in Christian times. Their one great 
error was in taking shadow for substance ; in 
supposing the Sabbath to be nothing but a 
twenty-four hours day ; not seeing that the real 
Sabbath is eternal in the heavens. Per- 
haps we have made a similar mistake. They 
thought it was the seventh day. Perhaps 
we think it is the first day. But it is not the 
first. It was not the seventh. The seventh 
was a type of it. The first may be a 
promise of it. But the real rest is unseen, 
spiritual, eternal. 

And this general mistake of theirs included, 
as we have seen, two subordinate errors. This 
first : thinking that it was an earthly clay merely, 
they made it sometimes a formality, and some- 
times a superstition. Pirst they neglected it and 
violated it. Then thev were afraid of it and 
worshipped it. 

And this secondly : regarding it in such a 
narrow, literal way, they came to think that they 
were made for it, not it for them ; that God had, 



THE JEWISH SABBATH. 87 

of his arbitrary will, enjoined it, not for their 
■use and interest, but for his own; and that 
their obligation to observe it was a duty which 
they owed to him, and not a privilege conferred 
upon themselves. Christ, by his right use of the 
day, exposed this error. He showed them that 
their interest and God's interest were not an- 
tagonistic, were not separate and twain, but one. 
God's rest was their rest. They were to keep 
the day to him, because he had given it to 
them. They were not made for it, but it for 
them.* 

This was the true idea of the Jewish Sab- 
bath. It has seemed necessary to draw out this 
idea, and to distinguish the right observance of 
the clay from the abuse of it, in order that we 
may be ready for the intelligent appreciation of 
our weekly Christian festival. For the Lord's 
day is the heir of the Jewish Sabbath. It has 
displaced it throughout the Christian world. It 
has inherited its memories and its hopes. It 

*Dr. Hessey's comment on this important verse (Mark 
ii. : 27), is interesting and forcible. (See Hessey, p. 123.) 



88 THE JEWISH SABBATH. 

has been treated with the same abuses and 
marked by the same errors. To the con- 
sideration of this Christian festival we must 
next address ourselves. 



IV. 

THE LOED'S DAY 

A PEIVILEGE. 



THE LORD'S DAY A PRIVILEGE. 



And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples 
came together to "break bread, Paul preached unto them, 
ready to depart on the morrow ; and continued his speech 
until midnight. Acts xx. : 7. 

It is from such, slight hints as that afforded 
by this text, that we get what imperfect 
knowledge we possess concerning the life and 
usages of the early Christians. The life of 
Christ himself upon the earth is only partially 
reported, although, being reported by four dif- 
erent biographers, we get glimpses of it from 
four different points of view ; and so the record 
gives forth more light, as a diamond does when 
it is cut with facets. But when we know so 
little of the life of the Master, it is no wonder 
that we know less of the life of his disciples. 
Concerning these first pillars in the Christian 
church, and concerning the great work which was 



92 the lord's day 

given them to do — the work of moulding the 
institutions of Christianity and defining and con- 
structing its theology — the authoritative record 
is very incomplete. The book of the Acts of 
the Apostles, and the hints in the various letters 
of the apostles, are the only inspired sources 
of information ; and even from these the knowl- 
edge on these points has to be carefully and 
laboriously dug out, like precious metal from a 
bed of ore. Precisely how the first Christian 
churches were organized, for example ; precisely 
what was their doctrinal belief ; precisely what 
were their religious usages and ordinances — 
these are questions which it is not easy authori- 
tatively to answer. " How was baptism ad- 
ministered? " is a question which divides the 
church with a singular and almost hopeless 
bitterness of division, even at the present day. 
But if we search the New Testament for explicit 
directions to baptize in this or that way and in 
none other, we cannot find them. Some people 
wonder at this. " How much trouble might 
have been saved to the church," they say, 



A PRIVILEGE. 93 

" what wrangling, what breaches of Christian 
charity, what scandal, what disunion might have 
been prevented, if, in some one of the gospels 
or in some one of Paul's epistles, there had been 
ten words of positive commandment on this 
subject." But, search the whole New Testa- 
ment as we may, those ten words of positive 
commandment cannot be found. 

These are illustrations and examples of one 
general fact which needs to be constantly borne 
in mind, and which may be stated as follows : 
The kingdom of heaven which our Lord Jesus 
Christ established on the earth, and of which he 
himself is the eternal king, is an invisible and 
spiritual kingdom. It is within men. And its 
force and operation is from within, outward. It 
makes its appearance on the earth unarmed, 
unfurnished with worldly resources. It brings 
with it no laws written on stone tables, or on 
parchment rolls, or on paper pages. It estab- 
lishes no courts to minister its justice. It erects 
no throne and provides no sceptre for the sway 
of its submissive subjects. It is not meat nor 



94 the lord's day 

drink. It is not circumcision nor uncircumci- 
sion. It is not observance of rites and ordi- 
nances, nor is it non-observance of rites and 
ordinances. It may use them, or it may refuse 
them. It is spiritual. Righteousness, peace, 
joy in the Holy Ghost — this is the kingdom. 
Love — this is the essence of it. Trust— this 
is the condition and commencement of it. What 
Christ brought from heaven to earth was not an 
institution nor a cluster of institutions ; not a law 
nor a code of laws ; not a form nor a set of 
forms ; but a spirit, a living spirit, a divine 
spirit, even the Holy Spirit, the eternal Helper 
and Sanctifier, to dwell in men, moulding them, 
strengthening them, giving them life, making 
them, and, through them, making all things 
new! 

Therefore, when our Lord finished the work 
which he had to do in his flesh, and ascended into 
heaven, he left after him no organized church, 
and, I had almost said, no instituted ordinances. 
Baptism, indeed (which was already practised 
in the Jewish church), he sanctioned as a fit and 



A PRIVILEGE. 95 

useful, and even, commonly, a necessary symbol 
of disciplesliip. And the Lord's Supper, too, 
he instituted as at once a symbol and a means of 
the communion of his saints, with him and one 
with another. But these two exceptions are so 
simple as scarcely to do more than confirm the 
rule. He left no churches on the earth. He left 
disciples, and committed to them the organiza- 
tion of churches, — to them, guided and in- 
spired by the Spirit of wisdom and of love. 
Questions of order, matters of detail, habits of 
worship and of Christian living, these were all 
things of Christian expediency which needed 
not to be ordained beforehand. The living 
Spirit was to construct its body, fashioning it 
in strength and beauty, and in constant growth 
of perfectness. 

To declare, then, as it seems to me we must 
honestly declare, that we can find no command- 
ment in the New Testament, nor indeed in the 
whole Bible, requiring the observance of a week- 
ly Sabbath on the part of Christians, need not 
surprise any body. You can find no command- 



96 the lord's day 

ment requiring the organization of churches 
after a given form ; no pattern shown, as there 
was to Moses in the mount, after which the in- 
stitutions of the church must be constructed. 
You cannot find any catalogue of maxims cov- 
ering cases of conscience, obedience to which 
is a test of discipleship. Nay more. You do 
find the first inspired teachers of the church ex- 
pressly disavowing the right of any body to im- 
pose such maxims and regulations upon the 
church, to require the observance of feasts or fasts, 
to compel or to forbid any outward observance. 
So that we may even say that, if there were 
found in the New Testament any text explicitly 
requiring the observance of the first day of the 
week, for example, as a holy day, that text would 
be in such manifest and glaring contrast with 
the whole spirit of the remaining contents of 
the New Testament, that its spuriousness would 
he prima facie probable. 

But if we find no commandment in the New 
Testament which fits the case, we surely find 
none in the Old. We do, indeed, find there a 
commandment requiring the observance of a 



A PRIVILEGE. 97 

weeklv Sabbath, but it is addressed not to the 
Christian church but to the Jewish church, 
and is obeyed more or less perfectly by the Jewish 
people, to this day. The Apostle Paul, dis- 
tinctly and in more places than one, rejects the 
suggestion that that law is obligatory on him ; 
and, while he might be willing to keep the 
weekly Sabbath, if it would be of any comfort 
to his brethren to have him do so, yet when 
any body should undertake to make him keep it, 
or to insist that he was bound to keep it, he 
would give place to such an one by subjection, 
— no not for an hour. All the energy of his 
manly, Christian soul resented such a binding of 
his liberty, and he shook off the entanglement 
of that yoke. I do not see how any fair inter- 
pretation of passages in Paul's epistles like those 
which I read this morning (such as Col. ii. : 16 
-iii. : 11 ; Romans xiv. : 5, 6 ; and almost the 
whole of the epistle to the Galatians), can avoid 
the conclusion that he, at least, regarded the 
commandment of the Sabbath as at an end.* 

* See especially AlforcVs long note on Ool. ii. : 16, 17. 
5 



98 the lord's day 

In that conclusion the whole Christian church 
has, in practice, and for the most part in theory, 
acquiesced. In practice, I say; for if the 
fourth commandment is obligatory, it is the 
seventh day which it enjoins, — and the Chris- 
tian church, with insignificant exceptions, has 
never observed the seventh day. And in theory, 
— for, although some theologians before the 
Reformation regarded the law of the Sab- 
bath as still in force,* only contriving in some 
illogical and unauthorized way to twist it from 
the seventh day, to the first ; and although other 
theologians in the reformed church (not all of 
them, by any means, but some of them) have 
taken the same ground — yet, on the whole the 
verdict of the church has been most clearly in 
agreement with the verdict of the Apostle 
Paul. 

I confess, then, with the utmost frankness 
and honesty, that I can find no commandment 

* There is some doubtful trace of this opinion, as early as 
the third century, in Tertullian ; but it was not till the sixth 
century that it became distinctly and formally declared. — 
gee Hessey^s Third Lecture; especially pp. 77—96. 



A PRIVILEGE. 99 

either in the New Testament or in the Old 
obliging me to keep a weekly Sabbath. Not in 
the New, — for there I am distinctly told to " let 
no man judge me "in respect of a holy day, * * 
or of the Sabbaths not only am I not obliged 
to keep them, but I am to resist those who would 
so oblige me. And not in the Old; for there I 
find a commandment addressed to Jews and 
not to Christians, and requiring, if it requires 
anything, the observance of the seventh day 
and not the first. 

It cannot be said in reply to this, that the law 
of the Sabbath, being a part of what is known 
as the ten commandments, distinguished by a 
peculiar dignity from the rest of the law, and 
graven expressly upon stone tables, remains 
permanent and binding upon all men, though 
the ceremonial law is passed away. To say this 
would be to beg the question ; to say this would 
be expressly to gainsay the words of the 
Apostle Paul already quoted. If the law of the 
Sabbath, as being a part of the ten command- 
ments, had been permanently binding, Paul 



100 THE LORD'S DAY 

would hardly have taken pains to make obe- 
dience to it optional, as he distinctly does. Be- 
sides, where do we find any exception of these 
ten commandments from the acknowledged fulfil- 
ment, or supersedure of the law by Christianity ? 
It is the law as a whole that is superseded. Are 
we then to be told that this, by far the most 
important part of it, is still in force ? 

But some man will say that I am proving 
too much ; that, on this principle, and if the ten 
commandments are superseded, then I leave 
men free to steal, to kill, to commit adultery, to 
covet, and so on. To which the obvious answer 
is that men are not left free to do these things ; 
but it is because they are in conflict with the 
Spirit, not because they are in conflict with the 
commandment. The law was superseded by 
the Spirit. But even of the Spirit of life in 
Christ Jesus there is also a law, the law of 
liberty, the law of love. And there are some 
things on the stone tables, and some things in 
the parchment books of Moses, which men every- 
where and always are bound to observe. But 



A PRIVILEGE, 101 

why are they bound to observe them ? Because 
they are graven on stone or written on parch- 
ment ? No. But they were graven on stone 
or written on parchment because men are 
bound by the Spirit to observe them. I must 
not steal. Why must I not steal? Because 
it is so written in the Jewish law ? No. But 
it is so written in the Jewish law, and in every 
other law, because I must not steal. It is 
wrong to kill. Why is it wrong to kill ? Be- 
cause the sixth commandment forbids killing ? 
No. But the sixth commandment forbids kill- 
ing because it is wrong to kill. My argument 
is not dangerous. It does not prove too much. 
And when I say that Christianity superseded 
the Jewish law, I mean, just as Paul meant, that 
it superseded the whole of the Jewish law. I 
may use portions of that law as a valuable and 
more or less perfect summary of universal moral 
duty. But I may not argue that this or that is 
universal moral duty merely because I find it in 
that law. I say that it is safe to forbid stealing 
by an appeal to the Spirit of Christ. It is safe 



102 THE LORD'S DAY 

to forbid covetousness by an appeal to that love 
which is the living power of his kingdom. It 
is safe to ground all duty here, to rest all obli- 
gation here. If I can make an argument for a 
weekly Sabbath on this ground, then I can de- 
fend it. If I cannot, then my right to insist 
upon it must be abandoned. If I can show 
that the Spirit of Christ prompts any such ob- 
servance ; if I can show that love, which is the 
fulfilling of the law, — love to our God and 
Father, love to our Lord Jesus Christ, love to 
oar brethren for whom he died, love to our 
own souls which he has purchased with his 
precious blood, — if, I say, I can show that love, 
which is the one great law, the only law^ of 
Christ, constrains us to this usage, or even that 
it finds a natural and helpful expression in this 
usage ; then I will urge it with all Christian zeal 
and by all fit methods. But unless I can show 
this, I cannot urge it upon any man, any 
more than I could urge the feast of tabernacles 
or the rite of circumcision.* 

* See Note at the end of this sermon. 



A PRIVILEGE. 103 

I know that it will seem to some that I am 
taking much unnecessary trouble on myself, and 
that I am going by a circuitous and difficult 
course to my result, when there is the easy and 
short cut of the fourth commandment at my ser- 
vice. But I have lived long enough already to 
see the mischief of supporting a good cause by 
bad reasons ; of defending truth by false argu- 
ment ; of risking battles in the maintenance of 
right by the use of wrong methods and by mak- 
ing a stand upon untenable positions. Of this 
error I desire not knowingly to be guilty. I 
desire not merely to inculcate Christian truth, 
but to do it, so far as may be, with reasonable 
justification and explanation of it. And I 
know that it is never wise, that it is never right, 
to win a temporary victory for truth by winking 
out of sight an error. 

Therefore, in this and subsequent discourses, I 
rest my defence of our observance of the first 

dav of the week not on the fourth command- 

t/ 

ment, but on the law of love, on the Spirit of 
Christ. And after this long digression I come 



104 THE LORD'S DAY 

back to point out what significance the text 
has, in this discussion, and what bearing on the 
important argument which I have taken in 
hand. 

It is, as I said at the outset, one of the very 
few passages in the New Testament which indi- 
cate that the first day of the week was marked 
by the first disciples with any special observance. 
There is, as I say, no commandment requiring 
its observance ; but is there, then, any evidence 
that the observance of it was a matter of general 
Christian usage ? This text helps to answer 
the last question, and bears somewhat important 
testimony to the fact of such usage. The ar- 
gument from it, in a word, is this : 

The Apostle Paul and his travelling compan- 
ions, going from Philippi to Ephesus and so 
back from their missionary labors into Syria, 
came, after a voyage of five days from his last 
port, to Troas, where a little church of Chris- 
tian disciples had been gathered. Here, says 
the story, told by one of the party, — "we 
abode seven days/' — the seven days closing 



A PRIVILEGE. 105 

with the first day of the week, — as if they had 
been waiting for the first day of the week to 
come, for some special reason. What was the 
reason ? " Upon the first day of the week, when 
we came together to break bread/' (the language 
seems to indicate an habitual act, — as if it were 
a thing of course that they should meet for 
worship and fellowship on that day,) " Paul 
preached unto them, ready to depart/' (or being 
about to depart,) " on the morrow/' — apparently 
having prolonged his stay especially for the sake 
of spending Sunday with the church ; — as if 
he knew that then would be the best of all op- 
portunities for meeting them. Full of zeal and 
of enjoyment of their companionship, he con- 
tinued his discourse till midnight, and even 
prolonged the communion season till daybreak. 
And so he departed, — commencing his journey 
before the Sunday had expired ; for the day, of 
course, was counted from sunset to sunset. 
Two facts, then, seem taught by this incident. 
First, that the day was regarded as a clay of re- 
ligious privilege, even in apostolic clays, and was 



106 



THE LORDS DAY 



sanctioned by apostolic example as an oppor- 
tunity of religions assembly for worship and 
fellowship ; and, secondly, that it was not re- 
garded with any such strictness of obligation 
as that the apostle was hindered from com- 
mencing his journey upon it. Both of these 
facts are important. 

But why was it regarded as a day of especial 
religious privilege? The answer is obvious. 
Already the division of time into weeks of seven 
days existed ; and the fitness and convenience 
of this division were so great that it was never to 
be abandoned but rather to become universal. 
Indeed, although the week of seven days comes 
to us and to the world from the Hebrew prac- 
tice, it may even be said to be a natural division 
of time, founded upon the phases of the moon. 
At any rate, it is a division of time which has 
proved its fitness and convenience by the test of 
use; and all efforts which have been made to 
improve upon it — to make a week of ten clays, 
for example, as in France during the time of 
her revolution — have signally failed. I say, then, 



A PRIVILEGE. 107 

that the week of seven clays existed in the 
Jewish world, out of which the first Christians 
were gathered. Any great and memorable 
event, any event of singular and permanent 
gladness or of deep and abiding sorrow, occur- 
ring on the first day of any week, then, or on 
the fifth day of any week, would be remember- 
ed, as a matter of course, and by natural and 
inevitable association, when the first day, or the 
fifth day of the next week would come around. 
And, if the event thus connected with that day 
was one of importance enough, it would be still 
remembered when the next week came, and 
when the next came, and the next. And if, per- 
haps, this great event connected with it was one 
' of which the grandeur and significance grew no 
less but rather greater as the weeks and months 
and years rolled by ; if it should prove to be an 
event so sublime, so transcendent, so full of 
gladness and promise and hope, that time could 
take away nothing from its meaning and glory, 
but could only add to it ; if, also, it were an 
event which pointed forward all the time, as 



108 THE LORD'S DAY 

well as backward, requiring to be cherished not 
as a memory only, but also, and even more con- 
stantly, as a prophecy, — then, as the day came 
around, each weekly observance of it would make 
the next more sure and more sacred, till the 
usage should become so venerable, so holy, so 
precious, that to touch it with the interference 
of rude hands would be a sacrilege intolerable. 
And when the day had won such sanctity as 
this, and reached such singular pre-eminence ; 
when it had come to be so valued and beloved, 
by reason of its clustering associations, by all 
Christian souls ; when with unanimous consent 
the church of Christ, which, as we have seen, is 
constantly inspired and guided by his living 
Spirit, had made the day a festival, I think it 
would be as much ordained of God as if the 
ordinance had been written on the overarching 
skies, or graven on the everlasting hills. Is not 
the voice of the Christian people, in some true 
and proper sense, the voice of God ? 

Thus I indicate the line of argument to be em- 
ployed. And now, very briefly, let us follow it 



A PRIVILEGE. 109 

out. We all know what was the one great 
event by which the first day of the week was 
made illustrious for ever. It was the resurrec- 
tion of the Lord Jesus Christ, the most sublime 
event in human history, the event which was the 
very keystone of that divine arch of promise by 
which the ruined world is spanned. On the first 
day of the week, he rose again from the dead. 
Do you suppose that group of sorrowing disciples 
who had spent the Jewish Sabbath in such 
depths of wondering despair ; whose festival of 
rest had been turned, that week, into such weary 
gloom ; whose last hope of the rest which Moses 
had spoken of, which Joshua had prefigured, 
which David had sung of, had flickered and gone 
out upon that gloomy seventh day, — do you 
think, I say, that they could ever possibly forget 
upon what day it was that there burst in upon 
their darkened souls the sudden and bewildering 
truth which turned their darkness into day ; 
which kindled to new brightness the extinguish- 
ed flame of hope,— which reawakened all the ex- 
pectation of a promised rest, — which opened up 



110 THE LORD'S DAY 

the very heavens to them in an infinite vista of 
glory ? Could they ever forget what day it 
was that turned their sorrow into a joy that no 
man could thenceforth take from them; that 
made the most timid and distrustful of them 
resolutely bold, so that they went everywhere 
preaching " Jesus and the resurrection ; " that 
furnished them thenceforward with their rally- 
ing-cry, their most blessed gospel, their most re- 
sistless argument? Could they forget what 
day this was ? Surely they could not forget it. 
They did not forget it. Prom the very first, 
there are indications that they marked it with 
peculiar emphasis. All the Evangelists take pains 
to mention it as the day of resurrection. In 
John's gospel it is recorded that the Lord ap- 
peared to his disciples at their assembly on the 
first recurrence of the resurrection- day — that is 
on the eighth day after the clay on which he 
rose, — marking it thus by peculiar honor. So 
we find, in this text, the assemblage on the first 
day of the week spoken of as if it were already 
a Christian usage. So elsewhere we find the 



A PRIVILEGE. Ill 

Apostle Paul advising that the first day of the 
week be used for charitable purposes. So Ave 
find the Apostle John speaking of " the Lord's 
clay " as a recognized day, on which he was " in 
the Spirit." * Such hints as these we find in the 
New Testament that, from the very first, it was 
impossible for the first day of the week to come 
without bringing to Christian men memories of 
sacred gladness, and welcome and beautiful 
prophecies of hope. It pointed backward to 
the resurrection of the Lord, — a fact which only 
seemed to grow more glorious as, in the process 
of the weeks and years, it grew more distant. 
It pointed forward to their own resurrection, — a 
fact which grew more welcome and more real 
as, in the process of the weeks and years, it 
came more near. 

Such hints as these, I say, we find in the 
New Testament — such hints as these and only 
these. I believe I have enumerated all of them. 
The verse which I have taken for a text is one 

* See Alford's interesting note on Rev. i. 10. 



112 THE LOED'S DAY 

of the strongest of them all, perhaps the very 
strongest. 

But now, if any man will say that these few 
scattered hints, if they are all that the New 
Testament affords, furnish a very flimsy basis 
on which to rest the obligation to observe the 
first day of the week as a distinctly holy day, 
I quite agree with him. They do furnish a 
most insufficient ground on which to rest that 
obligation. I rest no such obligation on them. 
I hesitate to rest such obligation anywhere. I 
do not dare to use that word " obligation/' lest 
I expose myself to the censure of the Apostle 
Paul. If I go about obliging people to observe 
the first clay, or the seventh clay, or any other 
day, I seem to hear the stern voice of that great 
apostle saying over again to me what he said 
once to the churches of Galatia : " How turn 
ye again to the weak and beggarly elements 
whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage ? 
Ye observe clays and months and times and 
years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestow- 
ed upon you labor in vain." I do not ground 



A PRIVILEGE. 113 

upon these texts, I cannot ground upon these 
texts, an obligation. I cannot find in tliein or 
in any others a commandment. But I do find in 
them a warrant for the privilege, a vindication 
of the right to dignify the Lord's day and to 
hallow it. If I can make men see the worth of 
this privilege, if I can make men feel the value 
of this right, then I can even urge it on them 
as a duty. For, in Christ's kingdom, privilege 
is duty, and duty privilege. To his disciples, 
right involves responsibility. The right of suf- 
frage, for example, involves, as I have more than 
once insisted from this pulpit, the duty of suf- 
frage. So the privilege of rest becomes to 
weary men the duty of rest. So the right to 
celebrate the weekly festival of the Lord's 
resurrection, and the weekly prophecy and 
promise of our own, devolves on tired and 
burdened men, immersed in care and constant- 
ly surrounded by temptation and distracting 
evils, the responsibility of celebrating it with 
worship and repose. If the opportunity is 
given — a day of religious opportunity— the op- 



114 THE LORD'S DAY 

portunity must be redeemed/ " because the 
days are evil." 

Coming at it thus from the side of privilege, 
not as Jews who still are bounden by the 
law, but rather as Christians to whom Christ 
has given the liberty of sons, the argument for 
the Lord's day begins to take on shape and def- 
initeness. That this is the true way to come at it, 
I have no doubt. That this is the way in which 
the Christian church came at it, is a matter of 
historic fact, and is even capable of historic 
proof. 

For some years after the resurrection of our 
Lord the Christian disciples were largely Jews, 
who had been trained .under the law of Moses, 
and who had come to love the institutions, rites 
and ordinances of the Hebrew church. To 
such, the immediate and complete abandonment 
of their Jewish customs was not easy nor desir- 
able. If there were any who could not see 
their way clear to give up the rite of circumci- 

* Eph. v. 16; where "redeeming the time " is, literally, 
"rescuing the opportunity.' 7 



A PRIVILEGE. 115 

sion, they might keep the rite of circumcision, 
for themselves and for their children ; only they 
must not impose it upon others who could see 
no reason for it. Just as nowadays we say to 
any who cannot see their way clear to any form 
of baptism except immersion, Very well, you 
may employ that form if you desire, for your- 
selves, only you must not try to make us use it, 
if our conscience leaves us free to try some 
other mode. So with regard to the Jewish 
Sabbath. There were many who could not 
give it up. It was a privilege which they could 
not bear to surrender. It was a custom which 
they had so long employed, from childhood, 
always, everywhere, that they could not drop it. 
Very well, then, said the apostle, keep it. " He 
that regardeth the day regardeth it unto the 
Lord." But do not let him say to his brother 
Christian, who was perhaps brought up as a 
heathen and who has no prejudice, nor associa- 
tion, nor preference connected w T ith the weekly 
Sabbath, or who is a more instructed Jew, and 
recognizes that the Jewish Sabbath is no longer 



116 THE LORD'S DAY 

binding — let him not say to such an one, '- You 
must keep this seventh day with me." " Why 
dost thou judge thy brother ? " cries the apos- 
tle, "He that regardeth not the day, to the 
Lord he doth not regard it." 

So things went on for a while. The Jewish 
Christians, many of them, keeping the weekly 
Sabbath, the Gentile Christians keeping it 
not. Meantime, every week the first day came 
right after the seventh ; and the associations of 
the first day grew, each w x eek, more glad, more 
glorious, more holy. More and more it was 
felt to be a privilege to commemorate upon 
that clay the sublime fact of the Lord's resur- 
rection. More and more it came to be the 
custom both of Jewish Christians and of Gen- 
tile Christians, to meet for worship and for fel- 
lowship upon that first day of the week. And 
thus it befell that presently the Jewish Chris- 
tians found that they were really observing in 
each week two holy clays instead of one. It was 
inevitable that presently the sanctity of one of 
them must wane. Many of the early Christians 



A PRIVILEGE. 117 

were slaves ; almost all were poor men, work- 
ing men. Two days out of a week could not 
be spared. It was an unnatural proportion. 
It wrought inconveniences of various sorts. In 
this busy world, not more than one seventh of 
the time can be withdrawn for festivals, without 
disordering society. Easily enough then, nay, 
inevitably, when the Jewish Christians were 
brought to the point and forced to choose 
which of these two successive days they would 
surrender, they gave up the Jewish day. They 
found that already the festival of the Lord's 
resurrection had so strong a hold upon them, 
that they could not bear to give that up. Be- 
sides, by this time, the Jewish Christians, who 
at first were the most numerous, had begun to 
be outnumbered, and the Gentile Christians, 
with their broader, truer views, had gained de- 
served ascendency ? 

I could cite quotations, if there were time 
and if it were needful, from the very earliest 
Christian writers after the apostolic age, to 
verify this historical assertion. Among these 



118 THE LORD'S DAY 

are Ignatius and Justin Martyr,* who lived 
so close to apostolic times that they might even 
have known the last of the apostles personally. 
A passage attributed to Ignatius (which, how- 
ever, is probably spurious) enjoins the keeping 
both of Saturday and Sunday ; but gives a 
marked preference to Sunday, as " the Lord's 
Day, as a festival, the queen and chief of all 
the days." But there is another version (con- 
fessedly authentic) of the same passage ; and in 
this the writer dissuades from the observance 
of the Sabbath, and urges a life " according to 
the Lord's ; " f the inference being, of course, 
that the practice of the church at that day was 
not settled and uniform. Some Christians kept 
the Sabbath ; some observed the Lord's day ; 
and Ignatius was among the latter. And Justin 
says, that " Sunday is the clay on which we all 
hold our common assembly," the chief reason 
for it being that on that day " Jesus Christ oar 

* Ignatius died A. D. 107; Justin died A. D. 164. 
t That is, "according to the Lord's life," as some inter- 
pret ; or, as others interpret, " according to the Lord's day." 



A PRIVILEGE. 119 

Saviour rose from the dead." I cite these two 
writers simply as representing the spirit of the 
Christian church upon this point during the 
first centuries of its history. I need not multi- 
ply citations. 

There is not time to-day to prosecute the 
argument, and if to any one it seems as yet in- 
complete, I pray him to remember that it does 
not claim to be complete, and ask him to reserve 
his judgment till it shall be finished. Two 
things only at this point I beg him to consider. 

First. If it seems to him, as possibly it 
may seem to some, that the event which this 
first day of the week commemorates is scarcely 
so sublime or so important as to justify it in 
superseding the observance of the seventh day, 
let him look to it whether there is not something 
wrong in his theology. It did not seem so to 
the apostles, nor to the first disciples whom 
they gathered. One difference between the 
apostolic age and ours is just here evident. To 
them the resurrection was of all the facts in 
Christian historv the most illustrious. To some 



120 THE LORD'S DAY 

of us it is of no more than second-rate importance. 
Is there not something wrong here? Paul 
thought of Christ as of him " who died, yea, 
rather who is risen again." I have sometimes 
feared that we were suffering from some dispro- 
portion in the order of our doctrines concerning 
the Lord Jesus Christ, and that the doctrinal 
significance which we attach to the sacrificial 
death of Jesus had been somehow allowed to 
overshadow and obscure the glorious meaning 
of his resurrection. Is it not possible to linger 
so long by the cross and by the sepulchre' as 
partly to deprive oneself of the glorious hopes 
and comforting assurances that attach them- 
selves to the rising again from the dead ? May 
not our Christian faith have been too much in a 
dead Christ, or rather, not enough in a living 
Christ ? I have seen men stand at the sepulchre 
weeping, to whom I have longed to say, " He 
is not here : he is risen/' These are grave con- 
siderations. But if it seems to us. that the 
resurrection of the Lord is not of sufficient im- 
portance to justify the surrender of the seventh- 



A PRIVILEGE. 121 

day festival and the introduction of the first day 
in its place, let us find out whether our the- 
ology is not in need of some adjustment. This 
is the first point. 

Secondly. If there is any man to whom this 
first day of the week comes not as a day of 
Christian privilege, but as a day of burdensome 
obligation, or • as a day without significance, let 
him ask whether something more than his theol- 
ogy is not at fault, whether his religion is not a • 
failure. If, when the day which celebrates the 
resurrection of the Lord returns, it brings no 
meaning to you or to me : if, as it points back- 
ward to the sacred memories that cluster around 
the resurrection cf the Lord, it stirs no thrill of 
gratitude in you and me ; if we do not spring 
responsive to its summons to give thanks to 
him " who died, yea rather, who is risen again," 
then we may be sure that there is something 
wrong in us. Is it possible that Christ's resur- 
rection is nothing to us ? But surely it ought 
to be something to us. It is the earnest of 
our own immortality, the promise of our own 



122 the lord's day 

resurrection. And the same day which points 
backward to the one points forward to the oth- 
er. But perhaps the thought of your own res- 
urrection, the assurance of your own immortal- 
ity has no attractiveness to you. Perhaps you 
give no heed to it, take no thought of it. Per- 
haps, even, it is an unwelcome thought to you, 
filling you, when it comes unsummoned, with 
gloomy doubts, harassing you with awful ter- 
rors. If this is so, men and brethren, if this is 
so with any of us, be sure that there is some- 
thing deeper than mere theological error in us ; 
that it is not merely intellectual ignorance and 
disorder that ails us ; that it is a disordered and 
corrupt heart. I charge you, therefore, breth- 
ren, to beware of such an evil heart of unbelief 
toward the Lord Jesus Christ, lest, a promise 
being left us of entering into his rest, of sharing 
his immortality, and knowing the power of his 
resurrection, any of us shall seem to come short 
of it.* 

* The custom of appealing to the decalogue to sanction 
the observance of the Lord's day seems to have grown up 



A PRIVILEGE. 123 

within the Eoman church, in an age not remarkable for en- 
lightenment and intellectual vigor. The growth of this 
practice has been sketched with some detail by recent Eng- 
lish writers, especially by Dr. Hessey (in his third lecture), 
and by Dr. Eeichel (quoted by Cox, vol. ii. pp. 380-4). It 
is not too much to say that the view of the fourth command- 
ment which is taken in this and the following sermons, 
has the greatest and most authoritative names in church 
history upon its side. To those of us who have been used 
to insist that the decalogue is still obligatory, and the 
Mosaic Sabbath still in force, the writings even of Luther 
and of Calvin must seem loose and perilous ; while the 
whole catalogue of German scholars, almost without excep- 
tion, the devout and evangelical as well as the rationalistic, 
give one unbroken testimony in the same direction. ]STot 
less emphatic is the opinion of the most accomplished Eng- 
lish exegetes, like Alford ; and of men like Whately, and 
Thomas Arnold, and Frederick Eobertson, and a host of 
others. Yery significant, also, is the fact that devout 
scholars on the continent of Europe, recognizing the supe- 
rior excellence of the Lord's day as observed in America, 
are urging the introduction of our practice, while they con- 
tinue to condemn our theory. 



V. 

THE LOED'S DAT 

HONOKABLE. 



THE LORD'S DAY HONORABLE. 



For if that which is done away was glorious, much more 

that which remaineth is glorious. 

2 Coe. iii. 11. 

In the sermon which I preached a week 
ago, we passed from the discussion of the Jew- 
ish Sabbath to the examination of the Christian 
festival of the Lord's day. I trust that it was 
made sufficiently evident, in the course of that 
sermon, that these two days are not the same, 
but different in many respects. Before we rest 
from this discussion, I desire to acknowledge 
that in certain other respects there is important 
similarity between them also ; but the points of 
similarity and comparison will be better appre- 
ciated if the points of difference and contrast 
shall be first and fully recognized. 

It will be remembered that I frankly dis- 
claimed any wish to rest the observance of our 



128 the lord's day honorable. 

Christian festival upon the fourth command- 
ment ; and even that I was at some pains to 
show why that commandment could not prop- 
erly be quoted as applying to this observance : 
because it was a Jewish statute, not a Christian 
one ; because, however excellent and admira- 
ble, however august in its enactment and divine 
in its authority, it still w r as local, transient, par- 
tial, and has been superseded by the universal, 
permanent, and perfect spirit of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. I know that it will seem to some a 
shorter and easier way to call this Lord's day 
the Sabbath clay, and to invoke the sanction of 
the statute written on stone tables to sustain 
the observance of it. I know that this may 
even seem a stronger ground on which to rest 
the observance, because it has the thunders of 
the fiery mountain back of it, and because (I 
say it sorrowfully) the stone of Sinai sometimes 
seems to our dull senses stronger and more 
divine that the unseen spirit of the New Tes- 
tament. 

Brethren, I do not wish to take away one 



THE LORD'S DAY HONORABLE. 129 

ray of glory from this law of Moses : and I 
could not if I would. Sublime indeed with an 
august and awful glory is that mountain of the 
law, burning with fire and hidden in the black- 
ness and darkness and tempest, and echoing 
with " the sound of the trumpet and the voice 
of words ; " terrible with a divine glory, that 
theophany at which Moses said, " I exceedingly 
fear and quake." Glorious indeed was the 
graven law on the stone tables given to be the 
constitution of the Jewish state. What earthly 
state had ever yet a constitution comparable for 
a single moment with it in glory? Glorious, 
too, with the high glory of an inspired wisdom 
were the laws and statutes written in conform- 
ity with this grand constitution ; glorious the 
institutions and the ordinances which grew up 
around and under it, the ritual, the festivals, the 
holy places, and the holy seasons of the Jewish 
people. Glorious with a peculiar glory were 
the Jewish Sabbaths, weekly Sabbaths, monthly 
Sabbaths, Sabbaths of years, culminating in the 
great semi-centennial Sabbath jubilee. All this 



130 THE 'LORD'S DAY HONORABLE. 

was very glorious. I would not speak one word 
that should detract from it, that should, even in 
appearance, lessen it. I rather magnify and 
emphasize it, knowing, all the time, that from it, 
as from solid vantage ground, we shall rise so 
much the higher when we come to estimate the 
glory of the Christian church, the beauty of 
the city of the living God, the length and 
breadth and height of the New Jerusalem. 
" For if that which was done away is glorious, 
much more that which remaineth is glorious/' 

For it is done away, — this glorious structure 
of the Jewish state, this sacred temple of the 
Jewish church. It is done away, — constitution 
graven on stone tables, statutes written upon 
venerable rolls, the temple, with its august 
ritual, the festivals, with all the glory of their 
memory and prophecy, the humane civil or- 
dinances as to meat and drink and cleanli- 
ness, the holy days, the new moons, and the 
Sabbaths. The language of the great apostle, 
in the text and elsewhere, is most unequivocal 
upon this point. This was the very point on 



THE LORD'S DAY HONORABLE. 131 

which the church at Corinth, to which he was 
writing, was plagued and imperilled at that 
very time. There had come to it certain teach- 
ers representing zealously the Jewish party in 
the Christian church, — that party of which I 
spoke a week ago as insisting upon the obser- 
vance of Jewish rites and ceremonies (such as 
the rite of circumcision), and of Jewish festivals, 
such as the weekly Sabbath. Not content 
with these observances for themselves, to whom, 
as Jews by birth and education, they were 
natural and valuable, they insisted that the 
Gentile churches, such as this one at Corinth, 
should be forced to keep them also : which 
when Paul denied, they went so far as even to 
dispute his apostolical authority, and challenged 
his doctrine as broad and dangerous, and his 
life as lax and disorderly. Against such charges 
and insinuations, the apostle, in his letter, ve- 
hemently defends himself ; and so, incidentally, 
has need to refer again and again to the rela- 
tion between the gospel and the law, between 
the new covenant and the old, between the 



132 the lord's day honorable. 

ministration of Christ and the ministration of 
Moses. Both are glorious, he says ; but the 
glory of the new is infinitely the greater. He 
does not honor Moses less, but he adores Christ 
more. He does not undervalue or contemn the 
Jewish law ; but when he puts it by the side 
of the glorious gospel of the Lord, it fades into 
invisibility by the comparison. Even the sacred 
constitution of the Jewish state and church is 
not excepted, " written and engraven in stones," 
(we know what portion of the law this was,) 
even this was done away by being superseded. 
You do not need a candle at high noon. You 
cannot see it if you have it. It has " no glory 
in this regard, by reason of the glory that ex- 
celleth." So with the Jewish law ; you pay no 
fit honor to it when you insist that it is still in 
force, — -nay, that it is in force more really and 
extensively than ever. Exaggerated honor is 
dishonor. The true way to reverence it is the 
apostle's way. Admit the glory of it — partial, 
temporary, local. And then lift your eyes to 



THE LORD'S DAY HONORABLE. 133 

see the glory of the New Testament, the mini- 
stration of the Spirit. 

Approaching the subject thus fearlessly, but 
without the least irreverence, I hope to show 
in the particular case which I have taken in hand, 
how our Lord's clay has greater glory than the 
Jewish Sabbath. Only let us first complete and 
fortify the argument for its observance. For, 
since the law written and engraven in stones, 
with all its glory, is done away, we have no 
right to rest the argument on the command- 
ment. And since the living Spirit of the Lord 
prompts the observance, we have no need to 
rest the argument on the commandment, but 
appeal directly to the liberty of love. Does the 
love of Christ constrain us to it ? Does the 
love of God, the love of man, the love of our 
own souls, impel us to the voluntary commem- 
oration of this first day of the week ? Or 
does this love find fit and useful expression in 
such a commemoration ? 

(1.) The question is threefold. Does love 
to Christ constrain us? The answer is not 



134 the lord's day honorable. 

hard to find. I showed, a week ago, how nat- 
urally, how inevitably, from the very first, the 
earliest disciples marked the day of the Lord's 
resurrection, as week by week it came around. 
They could not help it. It would have been 
hard not to mark it. So profoundly had the 
risen Lord become endeared to them, so sub- 
limely had he proved his power and Godhead 
to them, so mysteriously near and present to 
them had he come to be, by rising from the 
dead, that by an irresistible impulse they met 
to speak of that great victory and to worship 
the divine Victor on the first day of the week, 
on which day he arose. At first the resurrec- 
tion reminded them of the day. But presently 
the day began to remind them of the resurrec- 
tion ; and they doubtless found a comfort in their 
trials, and an encouragement in their faith, as 
week by week this eloquent commemoration 
was repeated. The lapse of time, the things 
of sense, must by and by have dimmed the 
memory and dulled the souls even of men whose 
eyes had seen the Lord. For they were in the 



THE LORD'S DAY HONORABLE. 135 

flesh and in the world, with fleshly hindrances 
to faith, with worldly liabilities to forgetfulness. 
For them, even though " with mortal eyes " 
thev had " beheld the Lord/' it was sometimes 
hard to remember, it was often easy to 
forget. So, with a natural instinct, they 
stretched out their hands of faith to grasp sup- 
ports of any kind that would sustain and com- 
fort. Such a support was the Lord's clay, 
speaking perpetually of his death, of his resur- 
rection, of his coming again to raise them also ; 
speaking perpetually, with the pathetic elo- 
quence of memory, with the inspiring eloquence 
of prophecy, of him " that liveth and was dead, 
and, behold he is alive for ever more ! " 

So, to each successive generation of disciples 
did this weekly festival prove its own value and 
establish its own sanctity. It made them think 
of Christ, — of Christ, whom thus to think of is 
to love the more. Lor the working of this prin- 
ciple is the same in either way that we may 
take it. If we love him we must think of him. 
If we think of him we must love him. If we 



136 the lord's day honorable. 

love him deeply it will help us to connect the 
thought of him with every thing, with every 
place, with every time. If we connect the 
thought of him with every thing, with every 
place, with every time, we will love him the 
more deeply. The truth of this is obvious ; 
and the principle is one so natural, so irresisti- 
ble, that we are acting upon it more or less un- 
consciously all the time. We even call it a law, 
the law of association, only it is applied here in 
the most sacred and important of all applica- 
tions. So that the law of association may 
properly be called a law of the Lord's clay. 
And no -love that is real and intelligent will 
consent to disobey it. 

But at first, before the life and habits of the 
Christian church had come to be well defined 
and adjusted, there was some risk of carrying 
this law of association to an extreme and incon- 
venient application. At first the Christian dis- 
ciples tried to make of every clay a Lord's day, 
as indeed it ought to be, in some fit and 
proper sense ; they would make of the week, and 



THE LORD'S DAY HONORABLE. 137 

of the year, a commemoration of the earthly 
life of the Lord Jesus. It has been well said 
by Robertson of Brighton,* "they set, as it 
were, the clock of time to the epochs of his his- 
tory." Friday, for instance, brought to mind 
the day of his death. Saturday was the day of 
his entombment. Sunday was the day of his 
resurrection ; and so on through the week and 
through the year. All this was well. It 
sprung from a devout thought and pnrpose. 
It is right for faith to catch at every thing by 
which to stay itself ; for memory to prop itself, 
for hope to lift itself, by all such means. Only 
there must presently come in other considera- 
tions, other influences, other necessities, to 
modify this practice. 

So, as a matter of fact, the observance of 
Friday grew more and more unimportant, grew 
less and less strict and universal, though it 
lingers to this day among the most numerous 
sections of the Christian church ; the observ- 
ance of Saturday became obsolescent, and at last 

* Sermons, vol. ii. p. 203. 



138 the lord's day honorable. 

obsolete ; but the observance of Sunday has 
grown more and more important, more and 
more universal, more and more glorious as the 
church has endured. What is the reason of 
this fact ? 

The reason of it is partly this, — that the im- 
portance of the resurrection as the culminating 
fact in the earthly history of the Lord Jesus, as 
the last link in the chain of evidence which 
proved his Godhead, as the keystone of the arch 
of gospel promise, fitly gave the resurrection 
day preeminence above the others. And it 
presently began to be discovered that a formal, 
general observance of them all as fasts or festi- 
vals would be impossible. To observe all clays 
alike would answer very well, if all clays alike 
could give the opportunity for rest from worldly 
occupation, and for fellowship and worship. 
But this could not be. Some days must be 
employed in busy work from dawn till dusk, 
with toiling hand and anxious heart. It was 
not every day that could be rescued for the spe- 
cial and peculiar uses of religion and of charity. 



THE LORD'S DAY HONORABLE. 139 

It must be one of several days. The structure 
of the week as a natural and inherited division 
of time, pointed to one in seven as the true pro- 
portion between rest and labor. Probably 
this, also, is the proportion indicated by God in 
the nature and constitution of man. One day in 
seven has been tried for centuries, and has 
worked well. There are on record one or two 
experiments of peoples who have tried some 
other proportion. One clay in ten was tried in 
Prance, but unsuccessfully. It is difficult for 
science, which, in such a case, must depend 
upon experiment for its facts, to speak with 
positive assertion on this point. But men with- 
out religious prejudices to impel them one way 
or another, have pronounced that the propor- 
tion between holydays and work days, between 
rest and labor, is best met by the venerable 
Jewish custom of one in seven. Less than that 
tends to drudgery, and dulness, and degrada- 
tion, and so is inhuman. More than that tends 
to idleness and thriftlessness, and so is waste- 
ful. Of the first effect, examples are abundant 



140 THE LORD'S DAY HONORABLE. 

in all heathen lands, where the incessant round 
of toil, unbroken by a seventh day of rest and 
religious observance, grinds down to uniform 
debasement the faces of the poor. Of the sec- 
ond result examples may be found, sufficiently 
significant, in certain Christian lands where re- 
ligious festivals have come to be so numerous 
and frequent that by reason of them the order- 
ly, industrious, and thrifty pursuit of business 
becomes well nigh impossible. Any one who 
has ever been in Rome, for instance, will re- 
member how fatal to habits of industry and to 
successful business are the innumerable holy- 
clays which interrupt the week and break into 
irregularity the order of the year. There are 
so many sacred days, so many rest-days, that the 
Lord's day, properly so called, loses its value 
and sanctity, and the people waste their time in 
idleness and worse. Practically, then, we may 
even say that it seems to be partly proved by 
experiment that one day in seven taken from the 
care of business and from the drudgery of toil 
is good for men; that less than this is not 



THE LORD'S DAY HONORABLE. 141 

enough, and leaves them dull and tired ; and 
that more than this is too much, and makes 
them lazy and inert. 

But this proportion, justified apparently by 
practical experiment, was first suggested to us 
by the Jewish lawgiver. We owe it to the 
Hebrew church. And just in proportion as 
science proves it natural and necessary, just in 
that proportion do we get the fuller proof of 
the high inspiration by which Moses was di- 
rected. In choosing this proportion he was 
not led by accident ; he was led by God. He 
found it hinted in the very order of God's own 
creation : six days of wise creative labor, and a 
seventh day of holy rest. God showed him this 
divine proportion and he copied it ; and by copy- 
ing it has made the world, which is adopting 
it, his debtor. 

This fact, then, helps to explain why it was 
that Friday and Saturday and the other days 
of the week presently lost their constant associ- 
ation with particular incidents in the life of the 
Lord Jesus, while Sunday, the first day of the 



142 the lord's day honorable. 

week, retained it. The observance of the other 
days with any formal celebration was impossible 
for men who had to labor for their daily bread. 
It deranged the true proportion between days 
of rest and days of work. If two days in seven 
had been possible, they would very likely have 
observed Friday as a general fast day and Sun- 
day as a general feast day. But since they 
were shut up by circumstances, and by nature 
even, to one day in seven, of course they chose 
to keep the first, the festival of the Lord's res- 
urrection. Their love to him constrained them 
to employ the day as a reminder of his risen 
life, his constant presence. 

Not less, my friends, not less the love 
of Christ constraineth us. Do we remember 
him with so much diligence and constancy that 
we desire no aids to memory, no incentives to 
our diligence, no confirmation of our constancy ? 
When a friend beloved is taken from our side 
by death, with what instinctive eagerness do we 
treasure every association that will help to keep 
his memory fresh and green. This was his 



THE LORD'S DAY HONORABLE. 143 

birthday, we remember, — this was the day he 
died. Here is his portrait, here the house in 
which he lived, here the green grave in which 
his body sleeps. Our love and fealty to our 
friend suggest these reminiscences, constrain us 
to these eloquent and powerful associations. 
Deliberately to put them by and forbid our- 
selves the use of them, seems to argue a will- 
ingness to forget, a waning of our love, a 
shallowness in our regret. 

Just so, because we love our Lord, we love 
the day that makes us think of him. Does any 
man reply with disavowal of his love to Christ, 
and say, "I do not profess to love the Lord, 
and therefore I do not love the day that makes 
me think of him." Strange as it seems, there 
are those who will make this disavowal and ex- 
cuse. But to such men the necessity of such a 
day as this is all the greater. You ought to 
love the Lord who loved you unto death, who 
loves you still with a pathetic agony of yearning 
love ; you ought to love him, and you need to 
be reminded of him till you do. The value of 



144 the lord's bay honorable. 

the day to yon is all the greater for the very 
reason which you urge against it. There is a 
risen Lord, a living Lord, a loving Lord, who 
died for you, who lives for you, who is coming 
to you in judgment. You need to think of 
him. You must love him, for his love is draw- 
ing you. Here is a day that naturally speaks 
of him. You ought to listen to it. It is 
fraught with clustering memories of him and 
of his love. You need to heed them. It is 
bright with thronging promises of. him and of 
his power. You must not refuse them. 

Perhaps I have dwelt long enough upon 
this first division of my question. Does that 
love which is the spirit of the gospel, prompt 
us to the observance of the first day of 
the week ? Does love to Christ constrain us 
to it ? Yes, I say. Love to him would prompt 
us, if we could, to link every day to him by 
some particular and potent association. But if 
this cannot be done, then love to him con- 
strains us to link any day we can to him by 
such perpetual and potent law. Here is a day 



THE LORD'S DAY HONORABLE. 145 

which we can so employ. The natural neces- 
sities of body and of mind permit, nay even re- 
quire, one day in seven for such use as this. 
And so the argument is perfect. " This is the 
day which the Lord hath made : we will rejoice 
and be glad in it." 

(2.) But the love which is the spirit of the 
gospel, burns broad as well as high ; reaches 
not only to the heavens, reaches also unto all 
the earth ; looks upward to the living Lord, 
looks outward to our fellow men. Does love 
to man constrain us, then, to the observance of 
this festival of the Lord's day ? 

It is not hard to answer. If our love to 
men constrains us to desire that they shall 
know and love the Lord who died for them, it 
must impel us to supply them with all useful 
means and opportunities to know and love 
him. This is a busy world. The cares of 
poverty are many and corroding. The deceit- 
fulness of riches is a very evil thing. Labor 
and anxiety, and sorrow, trial and temptation 
and fatigue well-nigh to death, — these occu- 



146 the lord's day honorable. 

py the time of men, absorb the thoughts of 
men, busy the hearts of men; and Christ is 
shut out from the souls he came to save and 
sanctify, because there is no room for him to 
enter, because there is no moment when he can 
be heard. On the plain ground of expediency, 
then, we might safely rest the observance of one 
clay in seven as a day of Christian opportunity. 
Even if you did not need it for yourself, nor I 
for myself, it would be our duty, in the absence 
of all reason to the contrary, to supply this op- 
portunity to those who needed it for themselves. 
Putting it upon the very lowest ground, even, 
as a day of physical rest and recreation, it 
would be the dictate of a wise and Christian 
expediency to provide for its observance. And 
Christian expediency, when it is clearly rec- 
ognized, comes to be Christian obligation, just 
as, by the law of Christ, privilege is no way dif- 
ferent from duty, nor duty different from privi- 
lege. I say then, that the Lord's day, as a day 
of Christian opportunity, is an expedient so 
wise, so useful, so successful, that the love to 



THE LORD'S DAY HONORABLE. 147 

man which is inspired by Christ, which is the 
spirit of Christ, constrains us to the observance 
of it. Indeed, this seems to me so evident, 
that I need scarcely dwell upon it further. 

(3.) But the love which we owe to our own 
souls constrains us to the same result. We are 
to love our neighbors as ourselves. For us too, 
as for all men, Christ has died. And since our 
souls are precious in his sight they must be 
precious in our own. I say then that you need 
this clay, and that I need it. If you and I were 
wholly spiritual, then all time might be alike to 
us. But we are not wholly spiritual. We are 
not out of the body ; we are in the flesh. We 
are tired and we need to rest. We are thronged 
with earthly cares, and we need sometimes to lay 
them by. We are tempted to forgetfulness of 
Christ, and w r e need to be reminded of him. 
Taking the day upon the lowest ground, again, 
as an opportunity of physical and mental rest, 
we need it. Your physician will prescribe it 
for you as a necessary aid to bodily and mental 
health. But we need it even more, as an oppor- 



148 the lord's day honorable. 

tunity for worship and fellowship, for " the assem- 
bling of ourselves together " for mutual helpful- 
ness, for the breaking of bread, for works of 
charity, for the joyful anticipation of our perfect 
rest. Each one of us is tired enough to value 
it. If we are not, we ought to be". It argues 
idleness and worthlessness on our part if we are 
not ready for this rest when it returns. Each 
one of us is tired enough, tempted enough, dis- 
tracted enough, tied down to earth enough, to 
love the day which gives us opportunity for 
looking into heaven. When we cease to be 
tired and tempted and earthbound, it will be 
soon enough to raise the question of dispensing 
with this opportunity ; when the days cease to be 
evil, it will be soon enough to neglect to redeem 
this time. Till then we need it. Till then it is 
our privilege. Till then, therefore, the Spirit 
of our Lord, the love which is the law -and 
power of his kingdom, will constrain us to its 
observance. Till then it will help to make his 
presence real to us, his life, his death, his resur- 
rection real. 



THE LORD'S DAY HONORABLE. 149 

Resting here the argument for the observ- 
ance of the Lord's day, upon such various, and 
I presume to say such firm and solid bases, I 
have left myself but little space to indicate in 
what respects the glory of this Christian festival 
is greater than the glory of the Jewish. Cer- 
tain points of similarity between the two, as well 
as certain points of contrast, have incidentally 
appeared in the progress of the discussion. 
They are not the same. The one was on the 
seventh day of the week. The other is on the 
first day of the week. The one had for its oc- 
casion a conspicuous incident in the history of a 
nation. The other has for its occasion the cen- 
tral fact in the history of mankind. The one 
was a monumental day to mark the emancipa- 
tion of a race of slaves. The other is a monu- 
mental day that marks the rescue of a world of 
sinners. The one rests on a stem command- 
ment, graven on stone tables, given with terrific 
and almost intolerable majesty of visible sight 
and audible sound. The other rests upon the 
free spirit of a willing and loving discipleship, 



150 THE LORD'S DAY HONORABLE. 

a spirit unwritten, invisible, the living, loving 
Spirit of the living Lord himself. The one is 
local. The other is fast coming to be univer- 
sal. 

So much by way of contrast. But there is 
comparison as well. Both days were festivals. 
The Jewish Sabbath, as I took pains to show in 
the third of these discourses, was not by any 
means a bondage. It was a privilege, a glad 
day, the poor man's clay, the slave's day. So is 
our Christian festival a privilege, a glad day, a 
day for toil to cease, a day for recreation and 
rejoicing, a day for the poor in spirit, for the 
meek and lowly. Both have been subjected to 
the same abuse, — have been twisted into burden- 
some vokes, — have been made a toil instead of 
a repose. Both days are Sabbath days, in some 
lower usage of the word, but neither is the 
real and perfect Sabbath. That is eternal in the 
heavens. Both days are days of memory. Both 
speak of slavery — one of the slavery of Egypt, 
the other of the slavery of sin. Both speak of 
rescue from slavery, — one of the rescue 



THE LORD'S DAY HONORABLE. 151 

wrought by God through Moses, the other of 
the rescue wrought by God in Christ. Both 
days preach lessons of humility ; one spoke to 
Israel of their low estate and bade them never to 
forget that they were slaves, helpless and hope- 
less, till God rescued them : the other speaks to 
all men of their lost condition, and bids them 
never to forget that they were dead in trespasses 
and sins, helpless and hopeless, till Christ died 
for them. Both clays are days of prophecy and 
promise. Both are days of rest, and speak of 
higher and more perfect rest. Both days are 
gilded with the brightness of a coming glory, 
growing brighter as it comes the nearer. The 
one, " illusively " leading the expectations of the 
restless people on from Moses to Joshua, from 
Joshua to David, from David to the Son of 
David ; the other leading the expectations of the 
waiting world onward and upward through the 
rolling ages, and above the changing earth, to 
him who all the while is coming again in the pow- 
er of his own resurrection. The first day proph- 
esied the second ; and the second typifies the 



152 the lord's day honorable. 

last. Both days are glorious with the glory 
which streams in from the invisible ; but just 
as of two mountain peaks, the highest one will 
catch the grandest splendor of the sunlight and 
hold it longest, so of these, the Christian fes- 
tival has glory so excelling, that by comparison 
with it the other is not glorified. Both days 
are temporary and transient ; for " they reckon 
not by years and days " within the veil. One of 
them is done away already. The other yet re- 
mains. And if that which is done away was 
glorious, much more that which remaineth is 
glorious. 

Chiefly in these three respects it has pre- 
eminent glory beyond that of the Jewish Sab- 
bath. I need only point them out in closing, 
for I have dwelt upon them already by anticipa- 
tion ; and I leave every man to ponder them in 
his own thoughts. 

This first. The Christian festival is a free 
day. Its service is a willing service. It rests 
upon no stony statute. It is the spontaneous, 
unforced act of loving discipleship. And its 



THE LORD'S DAY HONORABLE. 153 

glory in this regard is so much greater than the 
glory of the Jewish day, as the liberty of love is 
greater than the bondage of the law; as the 
ministration of the Spirit is more glorious than 
the ministration of the letter. 

And this day, secondly, is more glorious than 
the other by reason of its universality. That 
was local — for one nation. This is fast becom- 
ing universal. Already it is accepted as a wel- 
come privilege by Christian nations, many and 
populous. And whenever in his stately goings, 
the Lord Christ comes, in the knowledge of his 
gospel, to new nations and new lands, on distant 
continents or in the islands of the sea, he brings 
this privilege with him, — imposing it on none, 
permitting it to all. And so, by an increasing 
multitude which no man can number, it is com- 
ing to be valued and observed ; and weary sons 
of toil look up from the long bondage of unre- 
mitted drudgery, and give thanks for the day 
which gives them liberty and rest ; and souls long 
laboring and heavy laden with the tiresome yoke 
of sin rejoice to celebrate the clay which promises 



154 THE LORD'S DAT HONORABLE. 

a rest remaining for the people of God. So that 
soon, as year by year the kingdom of our Lord 
advances, there shall be no land or nation, no 
kindred or people where this clay shall not com- 
memorate the resurrection of the Lord, and 
prophesy the rest which, in the power of his 
resurrection, he is giving and shall give to 
men. 

And this suggests the third respect in which 
the glory of this day is greater than the glory 
of the Jewish day, — its increased spirituality. 
The Jewish day, indeed, pointed to heaven and 
to God, but pointed indirectly and remotely, 
pointed through types and shadows and inter- 
vening clouds. It spoke of heaven, but it spoke 
of Moses first, of Joshua, of David, and through 
them of heaven. But this day points directly 
upward, through no media, but straight into the 
opening heaven, to Christ who died, yea rather 
who is risen again, and who is coming in his 
risen power to give us rest with him, to give us 
rest in him. We know where our rest is. We 
know how our rest is. We look to him. And 



THE LORD'S DAY HONORABLE. 155 

this day speaks to us directly, potently of 
him. 

To-day then, brethren, if ye will hear his 
voice, harden not your hearts : and see that ye 
refuse not him that speaketh — that speaketh on 
his holy day and by it. For by as much as 
our heavenly Jerusalem is more glorious than the 
awful mount that burned with fire, by so much 
is the eloquence and pathos of this day more 
mighty than the teaching of the Jewish Sab- 
bath. Let there not be, my brethren, let there 
not be in us, in any one of us, an evil heart of 
unbelief, lest, a promise being left us of entering 
into rest, of sharing in the glory of Christ's res- 
urrection, any of us should seem to come short 
of it, 



VI. 

THE EIGHT OBSERVANCE 

OF 

THE LOED'S DAY. 



THE RIGHT OBSERVANCE OE THE 
LORD'S DAY. 



" Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind." — 
Romans xiv. 5. 

It may have seemed to some, as they have 
listened to the sermons in which, during the 
last few weeks, I have discussed the relation of 
the Jewish Sabbath to the Christian festival of 
the Lord's clay, and the relation of both of these 
rest-days to the eternal Sabbath of the living 
Gocl, — it may have seemed to some, I say, that 
the tendency of the argument was rather to un- 
settle the minds of men — and that, too, upon a 
most important and practical matter — than to 
persuade them fully concerning their own per- 
sonal duty. To such persons it seems a 
grievous evil that the minds of men should be 
unsettled on so grave a subject. Ts r o doubt it 
is. And no doubt the Apostle Paul would so 



160 THE RIGHT OBSERVANCE OF 

regard it, since we here find him, speaking on 
this very point, deprecating any such unsettle- 
ment of conviction, and urging, "Let every 
man be fully persuaded in his own mind." The 
word used is a very strong and emphatic one. 
The meaning is that every man should carefully 
and clearly settle the question of duty in his 
own convictions. Let him be fully persuaded ; 
and let him be fully persuaded in his own 
mind. 

It is not difficult to see where the danger is 
if questions of this sort are left unsettled. The 
apostle himself indicates it a little further on. 
Scruples of conscience can never be disregarded 
safely ; and, therefore, scruples of conscience 
ought not to be unnecessarily multiplied. To 
think that a thing is wrong is to make it wrong 
to him who thinks so. " He that doubteth," 
says the apostle, with regard to the vexed ques- 
tion of meats offered to idols, " He that doubt- 
eth is damned if he eat." To eat is not wrong : 
to refrain from eating is not wrong. But to 
eat when one thinks he ought not to eat is 



THE LORD'S DAY. 161 

wrong : to refrain from eating when one thinks 
he ought to eat is wrong. The spirit with 
which the thing is done is what gives it its 
character. It is the conscience of the man that 
must be kept void of offence. If it be an igno- 
rant or mistaken conscience, still it is con- 
science and must not be wounded. If the light 
it gives is broken and imperfect light, it must 
still be followed. It is to be enlightened by 
all possible means, cleansed, strengthened, in- 
structed — certainly ; but meantime it is to be 
followed, what there is of it, and used as best 
it may be. To act in opposition to it, or in dis- 
regard of it, is to incur spiritual injury and 
damage of a very serious sort. 

This is the position which the apostle takes, 
and it commands assent the moment it is stated. 
All men agree that a man must act according 
to the light he has ; and if he does so we hold 
him blameless. Walking in the twilight, I 
may see what seems to be a dangerous pit ; if 
it so seems to me by this twilight, according to 
the best judgment I can form, of course I must 



162 THE RIGHT OBSERVANCE OF 

keep clear of it. Returning by and by, at 
noonday, I discover that it is not a perilous pit 
at all, but a harmless shadow. Now I am not 
bound to keep clear of it, but pass directly over 
it. So conscience may bind me to do one 
thing to-day ; but to-morrow, being better in- 
structed, it may bind me to do the opposite thing. 
Or my conscience may bind me to one course, 
and your conscience, being differently instructed, 
may bind you to the opposite course. And so 
we may have, and often do have, the spectacle of 
two equally good men, equally conscientious 
men, doing two diverse and even directly antag- 
onistic acts. In such a case the danger is 
(first), that they will judge one another by the 
light each one of his own conscience; whereas 
that is sufficient only for the judgment of one's 
self and not for the judgment of one's neighbor : 
or else (secondly), that they will disregard each 
one his own conscience and adopt each one his 
neighbor's. The danger is twofold. Let me 
state it again still more simply. I may impose 
my conscience on my neighbor and say, "What 



the lord's day. 163 

is wrong for me is wrong for yon/' and there- 
fore condemn him. Or I may adopt his con- 
science for myself and say, " What is right for 
you is right for me," and therefore follow him, 
to the damage of my own soul. In either case 
I greatly err. For I forget that each man's 
conscience is his own and no one's else. It 
binds no one but him. But him it does bind. 
Hence the importance of settling questions 
of duly clearly, firmly, intelligently, — not by 
force but by persuasion ; and not for other 
people, not for every body once for all, but each 
one for himself, every man in his own mind. 
Unless this be done, this double danger 
of judging our brother, on the one hand, and 
of being made to offend by our brother, on the 
other hand, is very present and very constant. 
When a man is fully persuaded in his own mind 
concerning his own duty he will be safe against 
both perils. He will respect the conscience of 
other men because he respects his own ; and if 
they differ with him, he will neither judge them 
nor be judged by them. But if he has no firm 



164 THE RIGHT OBSERVANCE OF 

convictions of his own, he will suffer constant 
damage. He is querulous on the one hand and 
timorous on the other. He does a thing, and 
presently chides himself for fear that it was 
wrong, and so begins to abstain from doing it. 
Or he abstains from a thing, and presently 
grumbles because he sees other people doing it 
with no sense of wrong, and so begins to do it 
himself. " I don't know that it is right/' he 
says, and yet he does it, and so his conscience 
worries him, and ought to worry him. " I don't 
know that it is wrong," he says, and yet he does 
not do it, and so he is chafed and fretted with 
his bondage. Either way he has no liberty, no 
peace, and the only way for him to secure 
liberty and peace and safety is to follow the 
counsel of the apostle in this text, " Let every 
man be fully persuaded in his own mind." Let 
him be settled in his convictions. 

But some things never can be settled till 
they are settled right. To settle a question of 
conscience by force for instance, — by external 
pressure of command and authority — is no way 



the lord's day. 165 

to settle it. Settle it that way, and as soon as 
the pressure of outside force is taken off, it will 
present itself again. It is to be settled, not 
violently but intelligently ; not by an appeal to 
arbitrary statutes, but by an appeal to eternal 
principles ; not by referring it to the letter which 
killeth, but to the spirit which giveth life. Let 
a man be persuaded in his own mind. Let him 
see the reason of the thing. Let him see on 
what unchanging principles it rests. Let it be 
settled by intelligent persuasion, not by unrea- 
soning compulsion. Then it will stand. 

And " every man in his own mind." Let 
the settlement be a personal one. Let me re- 
member that I am deciding for myself and not 
for my neighbor ; and that he is deciding for 
himself and not for me. " Every one of us shall 
give account of himself to God," — of himself, 
not of his neighbor. Each before his Judge, in 
the court of his own conscience, stands or falls. 
It will be a great comfort to us if we bear this 
fact in mind. It will save us a great deal of 
worry and care. We need not decide ques- 



166 THE EIGHT OBSERVANCE OF 

tions of duty for other people. We cannot de- 
cide them for other people. Some people think 
that this is what a minister is for, to decide 
questions of casuistry for his congregation. I 
always refuse to do it. Every one in his own 
mind and for himself must settle them. Prin- 
ciples are the same, always and to all ; but how 
to apply principles each man must determine for 
himself. I can give advice, experience, sym- 
pathy, help ; but, in the end, I cannot take off 
from any man's conscience its own personal re- 
sponsibility. To fetter him in his own determi- 
nations is spiritual tyranny of the most intoler- 
able sort. To inflict it is a cruel wrong. And 
good men have gone to the stake and the gallows 
rather than submit to it. 

Having now drawn out the meaning of the 
text, I wish to apply it to the question which 
we have had under discussion. It almost ap- 
plies itself sufficiently. Depend upon it, this 
Sabbath question never will be settled till it is 
settled right ; never will cease to be a perplex- 
ing question till the argument for it is based, as 



the lord's day. 167 

I have tried to base it, on right principles ; 
never will cease to be a painful question, causing 
censoriousness on one side and offence on the 
other, till it is recognized as beinp; a matter 
not for general and obligatory commandment, 
but for the individual conscience. And if the 
argument which I have been conducting has 
tended to unsettle any body's mind, I justify 
myself by saying that it has been with the hope 
and purpose that thereby such a person's mind 
might be settled right, again, and settled per- 
manentlv, in Christian faith and Christian 
charity. 

That most thoughtful and Christian preacher 
whom I have had occasion to quote already, 
once or twice, in the course of this discussion, 
Robertson of Brighton, has pointed out the 
fact * that hardened criminals have sometimes 
traced their career in crime to the breaking of 
the Sabbath day as its first step. But, as he 
observes with fine discernment, the inference 
which Ave sometimes draw from such a confes- 

* Sermons, vol. ii. p. 210. 



168 THE EIGHT OBSERVANCE OF 

sion is unwarranted. We sometimes infer that 
because the criminal confesses that his breaking 
of the Sabbath was a sin to him, therefore 
it must be sin to every one and every- 
where. Whereas, this does not follow. It 
only follows that the criminal wounded his own 
conscience. He did a thing which he thought 
was wrong. To him, therefore, it was wrong. 
Whether it is wrong to other people or not, is 
still an open question. 

So, I dare say, many of us have, at one 
time or another, sinned in the same way. If 
we regard the Jewish law of the Sabbath as still 
in force, then we are bound to obey it, and to 
obey the whole of it. If we are fully persuaded 
in our own minds that the fourth command- 
ment is a statute for us, then disobedience to 
the fourth commandment is for us a grievous 
sin. And yet I doubt if there is one of us who 
keeps that fourth commandment ; it designates 
the seventh day ; have we never had scruples 
concerning the seventh clay? Have we ever 
fully persuaded our own minds concerning the 



the lord's day. 169 

twist by which this law is made applicable to 
the first day ? Have we not sometimes doubt- 
ed whether we were not bound to fall in with 
the Seventh-clay Baptist sect in their observance 
of Saturday ? And doubting thus, but not re- 
garding our doubts, have we not damaged our 
consciences ? 

Or if no one pleads guilty on this point, let 
us look still further. " In it thou shalt not do 
any work ;" this is the language of the com- 
mand ; " in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, 
nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant, 
nor thy maicl-servant, nor thy cattle, nor the 
stranger that is within thy gates/' Do we 
obey this law ? It is a strict law ; it is a plain 
law ; it is easy to understand it ; it is hard to 
evade it. " Not any work." Do you do no 
work on Sunday ? I do not ask whether you 
do less work than on week-clays. I ask whether 
you do no work. Do you never write a letter ? 
Do you never busy your brain with cares of 
business ? Do you never work with hand or 
foot ? Carry the question farther still. Does 



170 THE RIGHT OBSERVANCE OF 

your man-servant or your maid-servant not do 
any work on Sunday except what is dictated 
by mercy or necessity ? Do you never stretch 
those words " mercy and necessity " to cover 
somewhat multitudinous exceptions ? Carry the 
question further still. Do your cattle do no 
work on Sunday ? Do you make no use of 
your horses except what necessity or mercy dic- 
tates ? Brethren, I do not believe that any one 
of us, tried by the standard of this Jewish law, 
could plead not guilty. We allow ourselves in 
things which we believe that it condemns. 

What then ? Do I say that no man must use 
his horse on Sunday ; that no man must suffer 
food to be cooked in his house on Sunday ; that 
no man may walk on Sunday except as mercy 
or necessity requires; that no man may put 
forth his hand or employ his brain in work, for 
recreation, for example, or for expediency of 
any sort ; do I say this ? No : because I do 
not hold the fourth commandment as obligatory. 
If I did, I should say this. If you do, you are 
bound to do this. And if you recognize your 



THE LORD'S DAY. 171 

obligation to do this, and do it not, you wound 
your conscience and do damage to your soul. 
And here is the point. Our theory concerning 
the Lord's day is in conflict with our practice. 
Our theory concerning it is that the law of the 
Jewish Sabbath applies to it. Our practice is 
to use it with more or less of Christian liberty. 
What shall we do then ? Our Christian in- 
stincts urge us to liberty. Our Jewish tradi- 
tions entangle us with a yoke of bondage. The 
spirit seems to justify our freedom. The letter 
seems to condemn it. Oar practice does not 
seem to us wrong, when we look into the gos- 
pels and the epistles. But it does not seem to 
us right when we look into the books of Exodus 
and Deuteronomy. We condemn ourselves in 
that which we allow. We eat, but doubt. And 
the wear and tear of conscience in the process 
is serious and perilous. What shall we 
do then ? Manifestly, this is the first thins: 
to be done : " Let every man be fully per- 
suaded in his own mind." Take the question 
up fearlessly and honestly. Find out which is 



172 THE RIGHT OBSERVANCE OF 

right, our theory or our practice. Settle the 
point. 

But how settle it ? Suppose we cannot set- 
tle it. Suppose, when all the light possible has 
been gained by study, people's minds will dis- 
agree. Suppose when all is done, the practice 
of the Christian world is still not uniform. 
Suppose it to be true of us, as it was of the 
church at Rome in Paul's day, that, " one man 
esteemeth one day above another ; another es- 
teemeth every day alike." What then? 

The case is not a hypothetical one with us. 
It is a very real, a very important, a very em- 
barrassing one. We of New England, our 
fathers who are buried there, and we who turn 
with loving hearts and reverent memory thither, 
as to the source and fount of what is best and 
truest in the nation, — our fathers and ourselves 
(with some eminent exceptions), have been 
accustomed to regard the Lord's day as com- 
manded by the Jewish law, and to quote that 
law as the authority for its observance. On the 
other hand, good men in Germany and else- 



the lord's day. 173 

where, devout and learned men, have been ac- 
customed to regard the Jewish law as super- 
seded, and to observe the Lord's day upon dif- 
ferent grounds and in a very different way. 
Within a few years past, the steady stream 
of immigration has made European views and 
practices concerning this matter exceedingly 
familiar to us. The increased facilities of inter- 
course between nations have operated to bring 
us together, to show us one another's usages 
and to put them in frequent and distinct con- 
trast. The Lord's day in New England, — I 
instance New England as representative of 
what is best in the American churches, — 
is a very different thing from the Lord's 
day in Berlin, or even from the Lord's clay 
in Chicago, or even from the Lord's clay 
in New York and in Newark. In these 
last cities the American Sunday and the Euro- 
pean Sunday are put side by side. We see the 
difference between them. We mark how each 
is modifying the other. We begin to fear lest 
the nation shall come to esteem every day alike ; 



174 THE RIGHT OBSERVANCE OF 

and not every day alike holy, but every day alike 
profane. And we shrink from the surrender of 
any voice of authority, of any force of law which 
arrests or discourages such profanation. Al- 
ready, we say, the tendency in what seems to us 
the wrong direction is strong enough and far 
too strong. Let us make our laws stricter. 
Let us hold more rigid theories than ever. Let 
us be more scrupulous in our observance than 
before. Let us denounce these foreign customs. 
Let us put upon them the stigma of our con- 
demnation. Let us judge our brethren. Let us 
treat their customs with opprobrium and obloquy. 
Let us make them feel the strong restraint and 
penalty of civil law. At any rate let us not, at 
such a time as this, give up the useful terrors 
of the Jewish commandment. Let us not 
weaken our case by untimely concessions. Let 
us even do a little evil, and defend our practice 
with a false sanction, in order that so great a 
good as the preservation of our Puritan Sab- 
bath may come. 

The temptation to clo this is very strong and 



the lokd's day. 175 

and very plausible. But I do not think that the 
Apostle Paul would have yielded to it. I do 
not think he would have given such advice as 
this. I think that he would say, as in the text 
he has said, " Let every man be fully persuaded 
in his own mind." There is a right way and 
a wrong way to deal with this case. The wrong 
way is to deal with it by force. The right way 
is to deal with it by conscience, respecting 
the liberty of conscience on the one hand, re- 
specting the weakness of conscience on the other. 
I have very strong views on the question of 
comparison between the European Sabbath and 
the American Sabbath. I very greatly prefer 
our methods of employing and observing the 
day. I strongly deprecate the tendency to 
make of it a day of mere amusement, of animal 
enjoyment, of junketing and riot. But I would 
resist this tendency by fully persuading the 
minds of men that our way is the better way, 
and that it is demanded by the highest and 
most intelligent interpretation of the law of lib- 
erty, the law of love, the law of Christ. If I 



176 THE EIGHT OBSERVANCE OF 

cannot do it thus, I do not want to do it at 
all. 

Broadly stated, this is the difference between 
the European Sabbath and the American Sab- 
bath. With us the day is a religious day ex- 
clusively. It is a day restricted to the uses of 
Christian worship and of Christian fellowship. 
Public amusements are discountenanced and 
forbidden. People are expected to spend their 
time at their own homes or in their places of 
worship, and in religious occupations. On the 
continent of Europe and where European cus- 
toms have been introduced among us, it is very 
different. People go to church in the morn- 
ing, — that is to say, some of them do, not all of 
them, — but after that, the day is given up to 
mere amusement. Great dinners are given. 
It is the day for public and official banquets. 
The avenues and parks are crowded with people 
walking and riding. It is the great day for 
military parades and public spectacles of every 
sort ; for horse-races and things of that sort. 
In the evening all the places of amusement 



the lord's day. 177 

put forth their most attractive programmes and 
are thronged with people. And of course, 
more or less generally, shops are open and work- 
men busy in supplying the wants of this great 
multitude of pleasure-seekers. It is a bright, 
merry, popular day, but not especially a devout 
or a religious day. 

Between these two methods of observance I 
do not hesitate for a moment. Who that re- 
calls the sacred stillness of a New England 
Sabbath, — from the moment when the church 
bells fill the morning air with music, till the 
peace of evening settles down upon the deeper 
peace of holy fellowship with God, for which 
the day has given opportunity, — who that re- 
calls the sanctity of the day as our fathers kept 
it, the resistless eloquence with which it spoke, 
even to the heedless and reluctant, of another 
world than this, a pure and holy world, a spir- 
itual world, — the solemn sweetness with which 
it touched all souls, reminding them of one who 
died for all, that all might live, of one who rose 
again, that by the power of his resurrection we 



178 THE RIGHT OBSERVANCE OF 

might be glorified,- — who, I say, remembering 
this, will not say that our observance of the 
Lord's day (or let us rather say our fathers' 
observance of the Lord's day), as a spiritual day, 
was far better than the French observance 
of it, or the German observance of it, or the 
Roman observance of it as a day for sensuous 
and animal enjoyment ? By as much as spirit is 
better than matter, by as much as soul is nobler 
than body, by as much as eternity is loftier than 
time, by so much is it better. So it seems to 
me. 

Doubtless, our fathers' observance of the day 
was often overscrupulous, often legal and severe, 
often uncharitable even, in its intolerance. 
Doubtless it was defended by poor arguments ; 
doubtless it was enforced with zeal which was 
not according to knowledge. But they were 
fully persuaded in their own minds, and they 
acted on their convictions with an heroic fidelity. 
They were spiritually-minded men, although 
sometimes severe in word and strict in deed. 
If we can improve upon the practice of our 



THE LOKDS DAY. 179 

fathers in any particular, we are bound to do 
it. But it will be a good while before we im- 
prove upon the religiousness and devoutness of 
their spirit. So too, if in these respects we can 
learn any lessons even from the Germans, whose 
observance of the day we on the whole disap- 
prove, we are bound to do it. And if we can 
teach them any lessons, if we can show them 
any more excellent way, if we can share with 
them any inheritance of Christian method 
which is better than their own, as I surely 
think we can, then we are bound to do that 
also. 

And it seems to me (I say these things in 
the way of suggestion merely and not at all in 
the spirit of authority), it seems to me that the 
same motives which impel us to the observance 
of the day at all, should impel us to the observ- 
ance of it in a spiritual way, in a devout and re- 
ligious, way, in a Puritan way, if you please to 
say so, rather than in the European way of secu- 
lar amusement and animal recreation. What 
those motives were I need only remind you, 



180 THE RIGHT OBSERVANCE OF 

since 1 dwelt at length upon them in the last 
discourse. 

I said that love to Christ, whose resurrec- 
tion from the dead this clay celebrates, impels 
us to commemorate it. Because we love him, 
we love the day that reminds us of him. Because 
we love him, also, we shall so use the day that 
it shall best remind us of him. How shall 
it best remind us of him ? By giving up its 
time to sport and merriment ; by strollings 
in the streets and gossipings in public places ; 
by spectacles of worldly gayety, by noisy music, 
by sensuous eating and drinking, by theatres 
and concerts, by idleness and sloth ? I think 
not, verily. By meditation on his truth, by 
communion with his saints, by worship in 
private and in public, by prayer for his Spirit, 
by praise for his redemption, — in such ways 
as these we shall be best reminded of him, 
in such ways as these we shall get nearest 
to him. And if opportunity is given us to 
speak of him to others, or to do in his name 
works of charity and brotherly kindness, in such 



THE LORD'S DAY. 181 

ways we shall get still nearer to him, shall be in 
even sweeter fellowship with him. Gather your 
little ones about you, if God has given you little 
ones to train for him ; gather them about you. 
Let the day become a very welcome day, a very 
happy day to them, because, more than any other 
day, it is a household day, because the loving 
ties of natural affection find more full and beau- 
tiful expression than on other days. Let the 
thought of Christ be the deep undertone which 
charms and hallows all the clay, and which is 
heard more full, more deep, more resonant with 
eternal music, in the Sunday stillness than when 
driving cares and roaring businesses and jarring 
discords of traffic, and passionate excitements of 
gain and loss fill up the week. Take time to- 
day to think of Christ, to learn of Christ, to tell 
your little ones of Christ, to teach Christ to those 
who do not know him, to open the cloor of your 
house to Christ and let him come and make 
your home a holy place, to open the door of 
your heart to Christ and let him enter in and 
sup with you and you with him. 



182 THE RIGHT OBSERVANCE OF 

Then, secondly ; the way in which you keep 
this day must be determined by the love you 
bear your neighbor. Who is your neighbor ? 
Well, for example, your man-servant and your 
maid-servant are your neighbors. The man who 
takes care of your horses is your neighbor. The 
woman who prepares your dinner is your neigh- 
bor. You are bound by the law of love to be 
considerate toward them, and to secure, them 
in their enjoyment of their day of rest, and 
to give them the opportunity to think of 
Christ, to learn of Christ, to worship Christ. 
Because this day is a festival, we might proper- 
ly enough celebrate some part of it with 
feasting and with " pious mirth," if it were 
not for this consideration. It was not that 
the day might be a fast-day that Moses com- 
manded not to kindle fire nor to cook food upon 
the Sabbath ; it was " that thy man-servant and 
thy maid-servant may rest as well as thou." So, 
too, it is not that the day is any way a sorrow- 
ful or gloomy day to us, that we content our- 
selves without festivities which otherwise we 



the lord's day. 183 

might enjoy ; but it is simply that our man-ser- 
vant and maid-servant may have rest as well as 
we. It is not on the letter of the Jewish law 
that we ground any obligation of this sort. In- 
deed we do not speak of it as obligation any- 
way, and have no right to lay down strict un- 
bending laws upon such matters. Circumstances 
alter cases. Something, for example, depends 
upon the willingness, upon the Christian liberty 
and love even of our man-servant and our maid- 
servant, as to what service we may expect from 
them. And it is to the spirit of Christian lib- 
erty and love, and to that only, that we can 
make appeal. Only, " let every man be fully 
persuaded in his own mind." 

Then lastly; love to our own souls suggests 
what I have called the spiritual method of em- 
ploying the Lord's day, in preference to the 
simply sensuous way of using it. Bodily rest, 
indeed, we need. Let no man think that he can 
do without it. If he is forced by higher duties 
to deprive himself of it on Sunday, as a minister 
is, then he is bound to take it on Saturday or 



184 THE EIGHT OBSERVANCE OF 

on Monday. And I may quote the fourth com- 
mandment as obliging me to observe Monday 
as a rest-day, with just as much emphasis, 
and no more than that with which you 
quote it for the observance of Sunday. 
Make this Lord's day a day of rest to 
your bodies and your minds. Do not mere- 
ly change your employments of the week 
for different but not less wearisome employ- 
ments on this first day. The cases are excep- 
tional which will justify you in doing so. Rest ! 
It is a privilege, it is therefore a duty. It is 
especially a duty in this restless age and 
in this restless land. Do not think you 
are sinning if you sleep. You are sinning 
if you think so, but you need not think 
so. Refresh your body in such ways as 
seem to you best, considering as well the 
rights and the necessities of your neighbor as 
your own. Make the day a welcome day, a free 
day, a happy day, a day of privilege. Count it 
no sin to worship God through the enjoyment of 
his works in nature, beneath the temple of the 



the lord's day. 185 

groves, if so you choose, or among the lilies of 
the field, breathing his pure air, rejoicing in his 
blessed light, listening to the birds that sing his 
glory and that sing because he works to give 
them life and tune their songs, — count this no 
sin, if it is needful to you, if it is helpful to 
you, if there are no higher duties to yourself 
or to your neighbors which forbid it. But 
especially, and more than all, employ the 
day for spiritual rest, with thoughts of Christ, 
with meditation on the truth of Christ, with 
the communion of the saints of Christ, with 
worship in your home and in the church 
of Christ, " not forsaking the assembling of our- 
selves together, as the manner of some is ; but 
exhorting one another ; and so much the more as 
ye see the clay approaching." 

" So much the more as ye see the day ap- 
proaching/' What day? The day of the Lord. 
What clay of the Lord ? The clay of his eternal 
Sabbath ; the day of which this first clay of the 
week is the perpetual promise and dawning ; 
the day of God's rest ; the clay of the rest that 



186 THE RIGHT OBSERVANCE OF 

remaineth for the people of God. For it is ap- 
proaching. The first beams of it are gilding 
earth and heaven even now. It is not a day of 
hours and minutes. It is eternal. It is not a 
day that comes and goes. It " remaineth." It is 
not a day upon which there comes down the 
darkness of the night. "There is no night 
there." It is not a day upon which there comes 
in the turmoil and distraction, the temptation and 
the evil of the week. " There shall in no wise 
enter into it anything that defileth, neither what- 
soever worketh abomination or maketh a lie." 
This is the Sabbath day. This is the day which 
is approaching. It " cometh and now is," in 
souls that love the Lord and know his peace 
and share his righteousness. And it shall shine 
more and more throughout eternal ages. 

Into the likeness of this spiritual day should 
all our days be fashioned; for the blessedness of 
this eternal state should all our time be redeem- 
ed. If it were possible ; but is it possible ? 
For now, as when Paul wrote and labored, " the 
days are evil." Toil and trouble, traffic and 



the loed's day. 187 

speculation, the cares of this world and the de- 
ceitf ulness of riches choke them and defile them. 
If, then, one day among the seven, as the weeks 
roll by, can be rescued from absorbing care and 
from deceitful business, and sanctified to the 
peculiar uses of religion and of charity, in God's 
name and in the name of suffering and sin- 
ful men, let it be done. If there can be 
one day secured for rest and recreation to the 
weary sons of toil; one day for worship and re- 
ligious thought and teaching ; one day that shall 
prefigure and present by prophecy, and even by 
foretaste, the eternal blessedness of heaven, so 
let it be : and let it be this first day, the Lord's 
day, full of golden memories and eloquent as- 
sociations. Let it be kept as a perpetual privi- 
lege, an inalienable right, not with profane and 
noisy mirth, but with the sacred stillness of a 
joy and peace which the world cannot give nor 
take away. If there is given to us, by 
usage, by inheritance, by any sanction, such 
a day as this, we cannot afford to surrender 
it, we cannot afford to be remiss in our ob- 



188 THE EIGHT OBSERVANCE OF 

servance of it, or careless in our appreciation 
of its worth. 

I have scarcely left myself a moment's space 
in which to speak of the relation of the civil law 
to the observance of the Lord's day. But there 
is the less need for me to dwell upon this point, 
because the text itself, as I have now unfolded 
it, seems to indicate the true nature of that rela- 
tion. If it be true that this observance is a 
matter for the individual conscience, then what 
the law has to do is to protect the rights of the 
individual conscience. It is bound to do no 
more than this ; but it is bound to do this. If 
any man or any community is fully persuaded 
of the duty or the privilege of sanctifying any 
day to religious uses, they are to be protected 
in the performance of their duty and in the 
exercise of their privilege ; their worship is to 
be defended from noise and disturbance ; their 
rest is to be secured from the demands of busi- 
ness, so far as may be possible without infringe- 
ment of the rights of others. Moreover, the 
State has an undoubted right, which, indeed, it 



the lord's day. 189 

continually exercises, to ordain by law certain 
days for the refreshment and recreation of its 
citizens, — on sanitary considerations, or for his- 
torical considerations, or for the sake of any wise 
expediency ; and to require that on such days 
business of certain sorts shall be suspended ; to 
close the governmental offices ; to provide that 
contracts made on such days are not binding ; 
to make of it what we call a legal holiday. It 
may do this every week, and in effect it does it 
when it sanctions the observance of the Lord's 
day ; and every Government which is fully per- 
suaded of the need of such a rest-day or holiday 
is even bound to ordain it. Only, I would have 
you remember that Government cannot make a 
day holy ; that force cannot make a day holy. 
Acts of legislatures and of common councils may 
keep a day silent, may make it quiet ; but they 
cannot keep it holy ; and perhaps they will dis- 
cover that they can keep it quiet only for a little 
while. Holiness is a thing of liberty, not a 
thing of force. If the observance of the Lord's 
day is to be a holy observance, it must be a free 



190 THE RIGHT OBSERVANCE OF 

observance. If men come to take Jesus " by 
force, to make him a king/' he will withdraw 
himself alone. The service which is acceptable 
in his sight must be a reasonable service/ a will- 
ing service. And, as I have said already, the 
glory of this Christian festival above the Jewish 
festival is, notably, its freedom. 

Now I have finished this discussion, and I 
desire only to recapitulate the argument with all 
possible conciseness. 

1. First I tried to show, in the light of that 
venerable story in Genesis, interpreted by the 
commentary in the Epistle to the Hebrews, what 
the Sabbath is; affirming that in the highest 
and truest usage of the word it is not a day of 
hours and minutes, but an eternal state, spiritual, 
heavenly; that it is the rest of God, and the 
rest which remaineth for the people of God. 

We discovered also that there is a Sabbath 
work which God is doing,— the work of making 
holy the creation which he made good ; and that, 
according as the people of God enter upon their 
rest (or Sabbatism) they also, employ it in the 



THE LORD'S DAY. 191 

same holy activity, in being good and doing 
good. 

And we discovered also that, though the 
real Sabbath is eternal in the heavens, there 
may be Sabbaths in some lower sense — Sab- 
baths of days, Sabbaths made for man, shadows 
and types of the eternal rest in God for which 
man was made : and that, notably, there have 
been two such Sabbaths; the weekly Jewish 
Sabbath on the seventh day, and the weekly 
Christian Sabbath on the first day. 

2. Then, secondly, we discussed the origin 
and history of the Jewish Sabbath, and inquired 
the meaning of it. We found that it was insti- 
tuted in the wilderness as a monumental day, 
pointing forever backward to the slavery in 
Egypt and to the exodus from Egypt, — pointing 
forever forward, also, with " illusive " prophecy, to 
liberty and rest, — at first to Joshua and Canaan ; 
then to David and the earthly kingdom ; and 
then to the Son of David and the kingdom of 
heaven. ' 

3. Then, thirdly, we discussed the use and 



192 THE RIGHT OBSERVANCE OF 

indicated the abuse of the Jewish Sabbath ; we 
found that it was meant to be a privilege, but 
was perverted to be an irksome bondage ; that 
the Lord Jesus (as a Jew "made under the law") 
was the true exemplar of the right use of the 
institution, employing it lovingly, gratefully, 
gladly, as an ordinance " made for man ; " and 
that the Pharisees in their disputes with Jesus 
represented the abuse of the day, making it irk- 
some and burdensome upon men, as if men 
were " made for "it. 

4. Passing, then, to the Christian festival of 
the Lord's day, I showed how it came to be ob- 
served, and from the earliest ages of the Chris- 
tian church has always been observed, as a day of 
sacred privilege ; I reminded you of the august 
significance of this first day of the week, — sig- 
nificance at once historic and prophetic ; and I 
insisted that, not by the force of the Jewish 
commandment, but by the sanction of most 
venerable usage, by the dictate of manifest ex- 
pediency, and so by the operation of the Chris- 
tian law of love, it is to us a weekly Sabbath, to 



the lord's day. 193 

be welcomed and dearly cherished as an earnest 
of the real and perfect Sabbath. 

5. Continuing the argument, I also pointed 
out the greater glory of the Christian Sabbath 
in comparison with the Jewish, as consisting, 
notably, in these three points : (1) that it is a 
free day, not resting upon commandments writ- 
ten and graven in stones, but on the voluntary 
and reasonable service of loving hearts ; (2) that 
it is fast coming to be a universal dav, and 
not a day for one nation ; and (3) that it is a 
more spiritual day, pointing, not through cloudy 
types and shadows, but directly, up to the spir- 
itual and eternal rest, and to the risen Christ 
who gives it. 

6. And now I have indicated what seems 
to me the proper method of observing this 
Lord's day ; warning against bondage on the 
one hand, and against license on the other. 

So we cease the discussion where we began it, 

with the thought, the hope, the expectation of 

the rest into which God is entered, and which 
9 



194 the lord's day. 

remaineth for his people ; and with the solemn 
undertone of blended encouragement and warn- 
ing, which has sounded all the while, — Take 
heed, " a promise being left of entering into 
rest," that none of us " seem to come short 
of it," 



